[optacon-l] Re: Optacon research and development
- From: "H & C Arnold" <4carolyna@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2012 11:35:07 -0500
Nick, you have expressed very sensibly and thoughtfully the overall
situation with regard to the Optacon, what it can and cannot do and its
benefits. Someone mentioned on this list something about a braille display,
and I personally would not want that, although I've read braille since age
six.
DOG - Depend on God,
Carolyn
----- Original Message -----
From: "Nick Dotson" <nickdotson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, November 11, 2012 9:23 PM
Subject: [optacon-l] Re: Optacon research and development
Over the last 42 years watching the evolution of Adaptive Technology for the
niche population of legally blind, narrowed down to Totally Blind persons
with the physical intellectual psychological (motivation and perseverance)
capabilities and access to finances for such a device, finding engineers
capable of and willing to work on such a problem isn't the barrier. It is
the funding of the development cycle of prototyping, testing, then bringing
to market, and developing a useful distribution channel for such a product
that is the real barrier. I'm not trying to stamp on anyone's fantasies or
pipedreams of a success to the product we user's find so necessary for the
independent pursuit of life and happiness, however anecdotes on this very
list show the "real nature" of the educational barriers we face--that is,
effectively and quantitatively not just anecdotally communicating the
efficacy and utility of such a device.
Let's just look at a few of the technical problems and their proposed
solutions:
1. Nature of the tactual array. It wasn't caprice that lead Doctors
Linville, Bliss, and Beard (spelling? it would be easier for me to track if
reinforced by an Optacon reading the word and memorizing its shape, or, even
using a braille display if I remembered to reverse the contracted braille or
got it uncontracted) for the design of the display which their studies
showed contrasted with those of the mainstream camp of sensory/perceptual
Psychologists. If memory serves; they chose a rate of 144Hz (cycles per
second), and that's part of the nature of the maligned sound of the display.
It sounds like freedom and independence to me, but that's not the
perspectives of our sighted cohorts and colleagues... There were reasons
they chose a vibrating versus fixed array as braille displays have. There
is latency inherent in the process of setting up and dropping the pins of a
braille cell. And, one isn't likely to be able to get an array with the
requisite granularity to convey the nuances of letters or other things we
might want to examine with the device... It was 144 pins in the R1D, and
Many of us found the more coarse granularity of images produced by the
denuded array of the Optacon II insufficient to our needs...2. Nature of
the Replacement Array: Even some members of this list blithely refer to
devices with single celled braille displays as a potential jumping off point
for back of the envelope calculations regarding the nature of a non bimorph
(piazza) display. I've seen enthusiastic engineering students propose
everything from memory-metal arrays for fixed displays, force feedback
systems like the beautiful Phantom 3-D display, even the Kickback displays
on cell phones. Yet no one has demonstrated anything superior to the
Optacon's displays which could be manufactured at the same or lesser cost to
the Optacon. Even considering the possible decreased cost of South Korean,
or Chinese Manufacturing as used in the Perkins Braille Display--nearly half
the price of its competition we're not looking at anything with the
precision of the Optacon's display. And, vibratory displays such as those
on a cell phone would still make noise, and don't have anything like the
precision of an Optacon Array much less the lack of latency in changing the
display as one moves the camera across material being looked at with the
Optacon. Notice, I didn't say merely being read--I think most of Us would
agree that it is the lack of boundaries and restrictions which would be
placed on the user by OCR technology and fixed displays such as braille
displays--which make the Optacon so Valuable in so Many Applications... It
is the Analog Nature of the device that makes it so valuable. Whenever one
starts adding digital processing to this linear relationship between
photo-cell camera, and the array, latency is added. And any of we
experienced user's know the change in sound when moving across material at
any speed to see the inherent latencies in a seeming (but not actually)
analog device such as the Optacon.
3. Physical controls: I am not doubting the possibility of being able to
Kludge up some sort of a User Interface, which would at least comprise the
current Optacon's compliment of variation to cope with varied types of
materials being examined by the device user: intensity, threshold, image
polarity, zoom level, and power. However, it is difficult to envisage how
that could be implemented on a one-handed device without requiring either
that one remove one's finger from the array momentarily to make requisite
adjustments, or, that one must necessarily be a contortionist with the
unusual prowess of a stringed instrumentalist's virtuosity. The mention of
a mouse's controls seem a poor analogy or assessment of the nature of the
physical mechanics requisite to keeping the user's finger in constant
contact with the array while making the adjustments so as to be able to
immediately perceive the results of their adjustments to controls without
getting into a frustrating unregulated feedback loop (it's too much or too
little) if one were having to remove one's finger from the array for every
adjustment. Now we could imagine an array which would fit over one's
reading/viewing finger or fingers, but I know not of such an array in
existence or on the horizon, and one can no more predicate a sales proposal
on non-existent phantasmagorical technologies than they could if considering
making proposals for venture capital for development of a Star Trek
Transporter or Warp Drive... And "blue Tooth" communications for a separate
camera and display modules merely adds to the cost and complexity of
maintaining and supporting such a device not to mention the power
requirements...
4. Making a Business Case for the Device: Do we really have any idea of how
many Optacon User's there are World Wide beyond this list? Can we prove in
current terms, how our past Job Uses of the Device would stand up in terms
of today's expectations of Productivity in today's marketplace as contrasted
with those We who are moving out of the Labor Market had? Or to put it
another way, many of us who used the Optacon in a Computer-Related
environment were reading textual data. Nowadays, Unix, DOS, and the
underlying contextual text-based Languages applications in those text-based
Os' have been supplanted by Object Oriented OS' authoring tools, and now
touch screens.
I do not put it past the capabilities of the members of this list to have
within itself, the capabilities to formulate the requisite technical case
with regard to reining Engineers into a reality-based mindset when
considering the parameters of such a device so we don't have to recapitulate
the Human Factors work of the team who devised the Optacon; nor, our ability
to garner sufficient technical data to make some sort of justification that
those congenitally blind persons in the minority now--not being
multiply-disabled including intellectual and physical impairments, combined
with Adventitiously Blinded persons with sufficient Motivation to regain the
ability to read/examine data no matter the difficulties and lack of the
richness of sight might provide some scant base for a Potential User
Platform to provide a reference point as to the potential long-term user
base of such a device. However, justifying the much longer amortization
period to recouped R&D, tooling up and bringing to market, and recovering
the costs of distribution and marketing is an extremely "Non Trivial"
problem as engineers would say. That is why so many Adaptive Technologies
depend either on lots of off-the-shelf technology which can be repurposed to
our unique uses of them, or, for hardware devices which use lots of hardware
components which are cadged from other markets and their software has been
developed to run on lots of ongoing platforms to meet the needs of lots of
Users over a Very Long Period of distribution with basically-box changes or
processor and non-upgradable firmware changes to enable the evolution of the
next market generation's version of the device. We'll say the Braille Note
and its predecessors from HumanWare exemplify those concepts. Screen
Readers, and Blindness and L.D. oriented reading software suites comprise
the former.
And, the rationales for the discontinuation of manufacturing and
distribution based on our own community's perceptions and those communities
who get their livings from educating, habilitating and rehabilitating us and
the associated models of distribution and unwillingness of most
manufacturers of products for the Blind and Visually Impaired to venture out
into new hardware offerings are some of our biggest barriers.
Nick
-----Original Message-----
From: optacon-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:optacon-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Ninette Legates
Sent: Sunday, November 11, 2012 5:43 PM
To: optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [optacon-l] Optacon research and development
Hi List,
Could we, as a group, approach engineering departments who
might be interested in working on a modern version of the Optacon? Perhaps a
group of researchers would take the information that has come out on this
list and produce a prototype. The realm of possibilities for such a device
is truly exciting.-Ninette LeGates
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