[nfbcs] Article on refreshable braille projects

[majolls at cox.net]

I'll weigh in here too.

Unlike some of you, I'm a relative newcommer to Braille.  I'm 56, and I've only been reading it for about 8 years.  Braille is something I never expected to get involved with.  Even though I am a blind person (partially sighted who can read print) who was taught print.  So I didn't have the advantage of learning it at an early age and really getting some speed advantages using Braille over print.  There's a whole story there so I will refrain there.

Once I discovered Braille and saw the price of the Braille displays, I realized that Braille was something that every blind person should know, but the price of the equipment would lock out a lot of people.  Then I saw that people were working on alternate technologies to produce Braille (elastic polymers to name one) that could have the potential to drive down the price from $80 per cell to $5 or $10 per cell.  I'm not sure where the explorers are, but I'm hoping they can make it a reality.  If they can knock down the price to that level, even a 4 line 40 cell display could be reduced to $2000.  A single line display that we pay $3000-$6000 today could be reduced to $1000 or less.  That would put Braille in the hands of people.  And that would be significant.

I just hope that the people who are experimenting with this can make it happen.  I hope this isn't just a lot of talk.  The other thing that has to be done is to make sure that the publications we want to read are all in accessible electronic form so we can then use the lower price technology.  But I suppose one step at a time, huh?

---- Tami Jarvis <tami at poodlemutt.com> wrote: 
> Here is the link:
> 
> http://www.afb.org/afbpress/pub.asp?DocID=aw140102
> 
> Interesting indeed! I've been around the block long enough now to need 
> Tums for sure when I think of all those things that are just around the 
> corner when it comes to access to assistive technology. I want it now! I 
> *need* it now. And a lot of people I know are in the same position, even 
> here in our prosperous country.
> 
> There do seem to be more and more ideas and projects focused on making 
> refreshable braille affordable and more available for the many. This 
> cannot be a bad thing. I can't help thinking that the more blind 
> readers/students/workers/thinkers who can snap up these tools without 
> that government assistance, the more effect that will have on the market 
> and availability of the assistive tools... Or am I just being a rosy 
> optimist there? /lol/
> 
> So here is another possibility for advancement, waiting just around the 
> corner... But there are more and more of those around that same corner 
> that sooner or later one might just mature enough to let us catch up to 
> it and grab it!
> 
> Tami
> 
> On 01/29/2013 07:05 AM, Tracy Carcione wrote:
> > There's an interesting article in the January Accessworld about a couple
> > projects working to develop a more affordable braille display.  One is run
> > by the Daisy Consortium, and the other by NBP.
> > I don't know how to paste a link, but one can find the article by googling
> > Accessworld January 2013.
> > Tracy
> >
> >
> >
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