[Njtechdiv] Braille for a New Digital Age

[Mario Brusco]

a bit late, but here it is...

Braille for a New Digital Age
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/03/arts/tablet-devices-blind-braille.html

By Nazanin Lankarani
Sept. 3, 2018

When she was a graduate student in her native Bulgaria about five years 
ago, Kristina Tsvetanova was once asked to help a blind friend sign up 
online for a class. Understanding why he could not do so opened her eyes 
to the lag in technological innovation to benefit blind and visually 
impaired people.

“The shock that my friend couldn’t perform this simple task stayed with 
me,” Ms. Tsvetanova said in an interview.

Ms. Tsvetanova, who went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in industrial 
management and a master’s in engineering, knew that she had stumbled 
onto an untapped opportunity.

“I realized that there was a gap in the market and a business 
opportunity in developing technology to provide access to content and 
services for the blind,” she said. “I am a second-generation 
entrepreneur, my father taught me to take risks.”

In 2014, Ms. Tsvetanova, who turned 30 last month, moved to Vienna to 
take advantage of its more sophisticated business culture, where she 
co-founded the start-up Blitab Technology (a play on the words blind and 
tablet). She is also the company’s chief executive and has since 
relocated to San Francisco for proximity to Silicon Valley investors. 
Later this fall, she plans to introduce Blitab’s debut product, a 
portable tablet (also called Blitab) designed for blind and visually 
impaired people.

“Blitab will soon be available for pre-order on our website,” Ms. 
Tsvetanova said. “We plan to ship by the end of the year.”

On the top half, the tablet’s glass is perforated into a grid with 
holes, which allow Blitab’s liquid-based technology to create tactile 
relief — or “tixels” — that outputs content in the Braille alphabet — 
the touch-reading system that has been the literacy tool for blind 
people since 1824. The “smart” liquid alters the surface of the tablet 
to convert text, maps and graphics into Braille, by creating a rising 
sensation under the user’s fingertips.

“Blitab can translate any type of content into Braille using our 
cloud-based software and displays one page of content at a time,” Ms. 
Tsvetanova said.

Priced at around $500, Blitab could be the improved and affordable 
alternative to existing portable Braille readers that blind people have 
long desired.

“With this tool, the blind can surf the net, connect with friends and 
download books, like everyone else,” she said.

The impact of Blitab on the lives of visually impaired people is 
potentially enormous.

In 2017, the World Health Organization estimated that there were 253 
million people living with vision impairment across the globe, including 
36 million blind people and 217 million with moderate to severe vision 
impairment. Those numbers are expected to triple by 2050.

Existing keyboards for the blind mostly operate via piezoelectric 
technology, which uses pressure to generate electricity, allowing them 
to function as a Braille reader. The keyboards are often bulky, limited 
in functionality and sell for thousands of dollars. There are also 
portable Braille readers, which have been around for two decades, but 
typically offer only single-line displays.

“Can you imagine reading Harry Potter one line at a time?” Ms. 
Tsvetanova said.

“Only 1 percent of published books is available in Braille,” she said. 
“People with sight loss cannot actually read most books, they can only 
listen to them being read.”

Braille illiteracy contributes to high unemployment rates for blind and 
visually impaired people, estimated to be 75 percent in Europe 
(according to the European Blind Union) and 70 percent in the United 
States, according to Cornell University’s Disability

Statistics. These numbers are even higher on a global scale.

Since Blitab’s founding, Ms. Tsvetanova has been recognized for its 
potential to change the lives of people with sight loss. She won the 
Rising Innovator award in 2017 from the European Institute of Innovation 
and Technology and was recognized in 2017 by MIT Technology Review’s 
Spanish edition as one of its European Innovators Under 35. Last year, 
Blitab was among 56 finalists selected from 1,401 entries in the Index: 
Design to Improve Life, a design competition
based in Denmark, which awards about 500,000 euros (about $580,000) in 
total prize money.

“This tablet will be especially impactful for the life progress of young 
blind persons,” said Mette Laursen, a former board member of the Index 
competition.

“Just imagine the first time you used an iPad and the possibilities it 
opened for you,” Ms. Laursen said. “Blitab can do the same for the blind.”

Ms. Laursen was also a member of the jury of the 2018 Cartier Women’s 
Initiative Awards, an annual international business plan competition 
funded by the luxury jeweler that rewards innovative projects by women 
entrepreneurs. At its awards ceremony in April in Singapore, Ms. 
Tsvetanova was the top prize winner, or “laureate,” from Europe.

“Cartier’s prize is a springboard to help our laureates secure 
investment from banks and investors who rely on our due diligence and 
our assessment that these businesses are viable,” said Cyrille Vigneron, 
president and chief executive of Cartier.

While she awaits closing on a new round of financing this month, Ms. 
Tsvetanova is negotiating with a number of American service providers in 
the telecom and banking sectors to integrate Blitab into their businesses.

“With our technology, a visually impaired employee can review a document 
unassisted, and a blind client can read a contract before signing it,” 
Ms. Tsvetanova said.

“Blitab means literacy,” she said. “Reading it yourself is a big step 
toward independence.”

Correction: September 7, 2018

An earlier version of this article misstated the percentage of blind 
students in the United States who were considered Braille readers in 
2017 and 1974.
The statistics, posted online by the American Printing House for the 
Blind, were taken out of context. They were reported in conjunction with 
a registration program that helps Congress allocate money to states to 
buy educational materials for students who meet the definition of 
blindness. They were not intended to indicate overall Braille 
readership; such statistics were not available.