Hello, Noel,
You are quite right in the points you raise in this matter. In my opinion, the
two requirements at the top of a list for any instrumentality which would
intelligently read information from a print page or screen are "two-dimensional
motor control" and "decoding." Based on the broad spectrum of items I have
read with at least a reasonable degree of success, I don't know of any "CPU"
currently available which will beat a skilled human mind and well-controlled
hand. When I read Popular Electronics and Radio Shack handbooks years ago, I
had to be able to take that camera anywhere on the page and recognize any
schematic symbol I encountered. Part of that decoding was to make sense of the
lines connecting the symbols wherever they might run. If two lines crossed on
a page, the "decoder" told me whether those lines were electrically connected
or just crossed on the page in the same way that two insulated wires would
touch without being electrically connected. I don't see any possibility of
creating any piece of electronics which would come even close to do what I did
in those days. Knowing that I did it, I am certain that several other
totally-blind hobbyists with high degree of Optacon skill have done the same
thing.
Having said all that, though, my Optacon is an important tool among several
reading tools I have. I have an iPhone 6 with Seeing-AI installed; I have a
computer with a screen reader and a flatbed scanner. I select and use the
reading tool which works most efficiently for the reading need at hand in the
same way I use standard tools in my do-it-yourself toolbox. I am thus not very
interested when someone claims that they have the ONLY perfect reading tool for
us with impaired vision.
-----Original Message-----
From: optacon-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <optacon-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf
Of Noel Runyan
Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2019 9:34 PM
To: optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [optacon-l] Re: Braille reader article (fwd)
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,â€
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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