5 ms·
I'd love to have a 80x25 braille display. I believe they've been made in the labs. The blocker is the expense.
by eney 16y ago
I'd love to have a 80x25 braille display. I believe they've been made in the labs. The blocker is the expense.
- lukev 16y agoHm. I smell a really good startup opportunity, if one could build a reproducible design. I know there's a ton of blind people out there... do most of them know or rely upon braille, and would be interested in such a product?
- eney 16y agoMost blind people use speech output. If braille displays were more affordable perhaps more people would use them. But with the cost of 80-cel displays being roughly double 40-cell displays, how could make an affordable multiline display?
- lukev 16y agoI think you'd need a different paradigm. Right now each cell (if I understand the design) is a relatively complex mechanical entity. Scaling a display means scaling the number of cells linearly, which gets expensive fast. But if you rethought the problem and built a sort of generic pixel-field display, only with each pixel being a pin, and a consistent way of activating them (perhaps something like e-ink), you could manufacture arbitrarily large screens with sub-linear cost.
- eney 16y agoAh yes! A foldable display with nanotech that could make tactile maps and such with different textures. That's what I want.
- gvb 16y agoNot quite foldable... How about a single "cell" that is on an X-Y mount (or just X for a simpler single line display). Your finger "sees" only one cell at a time anyway. As you used your finger to "skate" over the surface of the board, the "display" computer would read the X-Y position and drive the pins appropriately for that spot. Back to a one-dimensional (X only) readout with something like a scroll wheel on one side to scroll up and down seems pretty easy and useful. Picture a dot matrix printer where your finger is the "paper". The printhead would need a 2D set of pins, not just a vertical line... hmmm, maybe a vertical line of pins would be adequate in conjunction with the left-right sliding motion. Result: size is limited by the X-Y mechanical accuracy (backlash, rigidity) and cost would scale very well compared to size: one cell's worth of pin drivers for any reasonable size readout. [edit] Per Someone http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1842617 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1842617, a X-only (line) readout with two heads, one for each hand (probably on the same platen) would mimic the Braille best. If you had a force sensor to sense the user pushing +/- in the "Y" dimension, you could use that to "scroll" the line without having to take your hands off the readout.
- hugs 16y agoThis might be what you're looking for: "When glass touch screens feel like sandpaper" : http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/innovation/10/08/tesla.touch.disney/index.html?hpt=Sbin http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/innovation/10/08/tesla.touch.di...
- bilban 16y agoWhen I looked around St Dunstans in Sussex (provides support for the blind and visually impaired), it was suggested that Braille was on the out, which surprised me.
- jules 16y agoWhat is the market for such a device? How many blind computer users are there? How many blind programmers?
- runjake 16y agoThen why not go for an alternative approach? Perhaps a capacitive touch screen with certain subtle audio and haptic feedback? It seems like the mechanical approach current Braille devices use might've jumped the shark, and I wonder if the blind world doesn't need a system that's more easy to do in today's world.