Programmable Braille alphabet will reduce books for the blind

Book readers have been widely available on the market for a long time. People appreciate it for its mobility and the ability to upload up to several thousand items to a device that takes up less space than a single book. Soon a similar solution may appear to meet the needs of the blind.

The problem so far has been that Braille is three-dimensional in nature. Therefore, it cannot be presented in the same way as on an electronic reader, because each page must be saved separately. Thanks to the new design, the problem can be solved.

The resulting reader does not necessarily meet your vision of its appearance. The design of the device is quite unusual, as you can see by looking at the photo above. It was created by compressing a thin, flexible coating, which was then curved and made small indentations. When no pressure is exerted on the object, the coating will still “remember” its structure. To remove them, just pull the reader sideways.

Traditional books for the blind are created on a similar principle. The shell is incredibly flexible, and during testing it was possible to control the number, location and chronological order of these indentations. Even now, the project offers a lot of hope for people who have vision problems. It is not yet handy and developed enough to be widely used, for example, in schools, but it is a matter of time until scientists find a way to popularize it.

[Źródło: engadget.com; seas.harvard.edu; Blind Foundation]