I'm usually skeptical when I read articles like this. Even when there is a new
product with new technology like the Orbit Reader there are always glitches. I
just had my second unit out for repair and it's been out for 2 months. Now APH
wants to work with Orbit Research on a graphics display. This is all well and
good but there must be a better track record before I'll believe new technology
is viable.
I'm not aware of any new technology which hasn't developed beyond the concept
phase. Maybe there will be an update at CSUN. I guess all we can do is wait
and see.
Dan
Sent from my iPhone
On Jan 15, 2019, at 9:33 PM, Noel Runyan <noel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Regarding this "Optical-to-braille converter proposal.
I think it is useful to try to imagine how and
when you might use such a device.
It may be helpful to imagine that all the
technical hurtles have been solved, so that the
device sells for under $500 has an all-day
battery life, is the size not much bigger than
one or two Optacon cameras, has built-in lighting
and automatic focusing, instantly scans and
recognizes the text under the unit's camera, and
instantly translates the text to silently raised
braille that responds faster than a tenth of a second.
Now, how and where would you use such a
device? Would you want to use it for contact
reading with the camera in contact with the
surface of the print or display screens, similar
to what you now can do with your Optacon, or
would you want to use it to read signs and other
materials that may be a foot or more away?
These are extremely different reading
applications, each with different advantages and limitations.
With the camera in contact with the surface of
the print information, your hand movement of the
camera unit controls the navigation around on the text, as with the Optacon.
For a while now, some folks have already been
able to connect their braille displays to their
smart phones or mobile devices and run KNFB
Reader, Seeing AI, or other OCR (Optical
Character Recognition) programs running in their
mobile devices and allowing these systems to
scan, recognize, and translate the text into
speech and/or braille. With these mobile camera
systems, the text material to be read is
typically a hand span or farther away from the
camera, and often includes a lot of characters,
maybe even a whole page of text. With a smart
phone OCR system, the navigation through the text
is a very different challenge, lacking the direct
hand control and spatial format information you
get when "pointing" to the desired reading
location, as you can do with an Optacon.
Please note that I am not making a value
judgement about which reading approach is better
than the other. I am just pointing out that they
are very different, and how you plan to read
materials may greatly impact your happiness with
an Optical-To-Braille converter that only
displays six braille characters, even if all the
technical hurtles I mentioned above could be
surpassed in the foreseeable future (however likely or unlikely that is).
The Optical-To-Braille reader proposed by this
MIT team might work well enough for certain
reading applications; however, it would also have
severe limitations if expected to work for many
of our typical reading applications.
Before getting too excited about this proposed
reading system, it could be helpful for each of
us to do some serious dreaming or imagining about
just exactly where, when, and how you might use it.
Cordially,
Noel
-
Noel H. Runyan
Phone: 1-408-866-7564
-
At 03:30 PM 1/15/2019, dan.tevelde@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bitto view the list archives, go to:
I've read about this device and wonder if anything will come of it.
Dan
-----Original Message-----
From: optacon-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<optacon-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of harlynn@xxxxxxxxx
Sent: Sunday, January 6, 2019 2:04 AM
To: optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [optacon-l] Braille reader article (fwd)
Subject: Braille reader article
This Device Translates Text To Braille in Real Time
Team Tactile hopes to create an inexpensive and
portable device that can raise text right off the page
Maya Wei-Haas
The team has developed many different
prototypes. Their latest iteration can display
six characters at a time and images the text
using an internal camera. (Lemelson-MIT) In the
wee hours of Valentine's day last year, a team
of six women, all MIT engineering
undergraduates, sat exhausted but exhilarated.
Their table strewn with colorful wires, post it
notes, food wrappers, scraps of papers, shapes
cut from cardboard. This was no craft project
gone awry. The team had just competed in
MakeMIT’s hackathon—a competition in which
teams of students spend 15 hours designing,
coding, constructing, testing and debugging ambitious projects.
The women, competing under the team name 100%
Enthusiasm, had set out to tackle a big
challenge: accessibility for the blind. Their
idea: a portable, inexpensive device that could
scan text and convert it to braille in real
time. It was something with potential to
transform the lives of some of the 1.3 million Americanswho are legally
blind.
This first iteration was rough. Nearly the size
of an adult’s hand, the mechanics of the
device were sandwiched between two panes of
plastic—wires and circuit boards exposed. Six
pins poked up through the top of the device to
display a single braille character (letter,
number or punctuation mark). It imaged each
character of text using an external computer’s
webcam, rather than an internal camera as the
team had hoped, explains Chen “Bonnie†Wang,
one of the team members who is currently a
senior majoring in material science and
engineering. It was slow and not particularly
portable. But it worked, translating text to braille. Team 100% Enthusiasm
won.
At the MakeMIT hackathon, the team initially
constructed a rough prototype with a cardboard
frame before 3D printing the pins and laser
cutting the acrylic panels. (Lemelson-MIT) The
win was just the beginning of their work with
the device, which they dubbed Tactile. Now, many
prototypes later, the team has received another
accolade. Tactile is one of nine winners for
this year’s Lemelson-MIT Student Prize, which
celebrates the translation of “ideas into
inventions that improve the world in which we
live,†according to the contest’s website.
The winning inventions—a folding electric drone,
proteins to fight superbugs, and a solar-powered
desalination system for off-grid water
production, to name a few—tackle a wide range of problems.
.
“We were super honored to be chosen as one of
the winners of the award,†says Wang. The
title came with a $10,000 prize that they are
hoping to put back into the project to continue
to improve how the device works.
The team’s latest prototype, about the size of
a candy bar, can display six characters at a
time (the average English word is roughly five
characters long) and has a built in camera.
Users can place it down on a line of text and
with a push of a button, the device takes an
image. Optical character recognition then takes
over, identifying the characters on the page
using Microsoft’s Computer Vision API. Then
the team’s software translates each character
into braille and subsequently triggers the
mechanical system in the box to raise and lower
the pins. They have applied for a patent for the
integration of the system through Microsoft’s
#MakeWhatsNext patent program, which supports women inventors.
“Currently the camera only takes a picture of
its field of view,†Chandani Doshi, one of the
team members who is majoring in electrical
engineering and computer science, explains via
email. “We are aiming to make the device
similar to a handheld scanner that allows the
user to scan the entire page in one go.†The
idea is to make it as easy as possible to
operate, preventing the user from needing to
keep track of where they are on the page.
Team Tactile is composed of six MIT senior
engineering undergraduates—Chen Wang, Chandani
Doshi, Grace Li, Jessica Shi, Charlene Xia and
Tania Yu—who all wanted to make a difference in
the world. (Brian Smale, Microsoft) Though this
is not the first real-time text to braille
device, most products are based on digital text,
like ebooks or pdfs—and they are extremely
expensive. For example, the HumanWare Brailliant
can connect to mobile devices and computers,
allowing the user to type on the six-keyed
braille keyboard and read using the one-line
display of 32 characters. Prices for the device
start at over $2,500. Also popular are what’s
known as braille note-takers. These are like
mini-computers, allowing word processing, the
use of excel and powerpoint, and internet
browsing. But these, too, retail in the thousands.
ds.
And a lot of text is not readily available in
electronic format—menus, brochures, receipts,
business cards, class handouts and more. Tactile
would raise the text of these inaccessible
documents right off the page. The team hopes to
eventually sell the device for a maximum cost of $200.
One of the many challenges in development,
however, is figuring out a better way to raise
and lower the pins. In similar devices on the
market, this has long been done using
piezoelectronics—an expensive method that
harnesses the properties of crystal structures.
The team hopes to use microfluidics (differences
in either liquid or air pressure) or
electromagnetism (interactions of electric
currents and magnetic fields) to move the pins.
They are now testing both systems to figure out
which is the least expensive, but most
responsive and shrinkable for their final prototype.
Ultimately the team hopes that the final product
will be slightly smaller than their current
prototype and display two lines of 18 characters
each. They hope to get it to market within two years.
“This opens up the world, really. What
limitation is there if you have a device that
would transcribe any document into braille?â€
the team’s adviser Paul Parravano, who has
been visually impaired since he was three,
inquires in a video about the device. “Suddenly the library is open.â€
The question, however, is how many people will
be waiting and ready to read the library. A
commonly cited statistic is that less than 10
percent of people who are legally blind can
actually read braille. Many people prefer to use
text-to-speech technology and other audio-based
programs, says Marion Hersh, a researcher who
specializes in assistive technology at the
University of Glasgow. Braille is challenging to
learn and given the option, she says, many
instead choose audio or even magnification (if they have limited eyesight).
It is important to note, however, that the
braille literacy numbers are based on an
outdated mode of measurement: supply of braille
books from American Printing House for the
Blind, explains Ike Presley, National Project
Manager for the American Foundation for the
Blind. “We definitely want to stifle that
misconception that braille is dead and
technology is putting braille out of
business,†he says. “If anything, technology
is making braille more accessible.â€
The team has received feedback on each iteration
of Tactile from their adviser Paul Parravano,
who has been visually impaired since he was three.
The women of team Tactile are well aware of the
statistic, but believe that part of the problem
is the lack of inexpensive devices to make
braille more available. The market for such
devices is small, so few companies venture in
with innovative ideas. “We don't have a
Microsoft or an Apple ... the tech companies
that make the tools for people who are blind or
visually impaired are relatively small,†says Presley.
This means less competition, less innovation and
higher prices. “It really drives up the cost,
which limits access to braille even more. It's just a bad cycle,†says
Wang.
“Whether this could encourage people who
don’t already know braille to use it is open
to questions,†says Hersh. But she notes that
any new accessibility technology that combines
low cost with ease of use could be extremely helpful in the market.
Learning braille means literacy for the blind
community, says Presley, who helps train service
providers so they can more effectively work with
the visually impaired. Audio systems don’t
provide the same understanding of language.
“Auditory is great...but it doesn’t give you
the literacy,†he says. “When you listen to
[text read aloud], you don't know how to spell
the words, you don't see the grammar, you don't
see how text is formatted ...But when you read it in braille, you do.â€
Studies also suggest that braille literacy
increases both likelihood of being employed and
an overall higher earnings potential for the
blind and visually impaired—a group that has
historically suffered high rates of unemployment.
These factors have only made team Tactile more
determined to keep working on their product. All
six engineers will graduate this June. But that
isn’t going to slow them down. Three plan to
continue working on Tactile, says Wang, and the others will continue part
time.
“These women are on a great path, and as young
as they are, if they can devote the next 20
years of their career to this, wow,†says
Presley. “There's no telling what they might come up with.â€
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