[nfbcs] New Braille Displays

[Mike Freeman]

People have been discussing displays based upon these deformable polymers for some years now. Several persons have given presentations to our R&D Committee but so far, it's all vaporware. Some of the unsolved problems include getting such a display to respond quickly enough and getting the display not to deform under pressure of the fingers reading it. 
Bottom line: the technology looks promising but that's about it so far. Most of the hype comes from entities looking for research or development money! 

Mike Freeman
sent from my iPhone

On Mar 15, 2013, at 8:08, <majolls at cox.net> wrote:

> I recently posted a reply about the "new keyboard" on touch devices that "pops up".  This was in an email that was talking about the technology's application to tablets to provide dynamic buttons that popup on the tablet surface to provide a dynamic keyboard, and was showcased at CSum.  I made the comments that this technology developed by Tactus might be used to develop a more cost effective refreshable Braille display.  I didn't hear any response to my post.  I was wondering if any of you had heard similar rumors about developing Braille displays with deformable elastic polymers?  I've heard  this could drop the price of a braille cell from $80 (currently using piezo-electric cells) to about $10 per cell.  That would be a tremendous cost savings if it can actually be done.  Im just wondering if I'm getting excited over nothing or if a more affordable unit with more usable cells could really be in the future?
> 
> Does anybody hear anything from reputable sources that they'd like to share?
> 
> Thanks
> 
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