FORWARDEDMAIL FROM TOM WAY, ON TACTILE GRAPHICS

From: Brian Buhrow (buhrow@lothlorien.nfbcal.org)
Date: Wed Nov 30 1994 - 08:55:15 PST


Dear Members:

I've never posted here before, and received your address
from Emerson Foulke, who suggested I ask for your help.
I am a Computer Science graduate student at the University
of Delaware, and a research assistant at the Applied Science
and Engineering Labs, working to develop a tactile user
interface to make graphical user interfaces more accessible.

As a baseline for developing new technology, we would like
to incorporate the fingertip tactile display from an Optacon
or, if necessary, one or more braille character displays modified
to be pin-addressable (to hopefully do what the Optacon does
only with a much lower resolution).

My problem is in locating the components. Since we will be
experimenting with parts, and have the typical limited budget,
we cannot afford to pay full price for an Optacon... and I have
had no luck in finding the manufacturer of braille character
display components either. Do you have any suggestions or
thoughts in this area about where I might find a used Optacon,
braille character components, or similar pieces of hardware?

Alternatively, if you have any thoughts or feelings about
the feasibility and usefullness of a tactile interface,
I would love to know what you think.

Thanks very much for your time, :-)

Tom Way
way@asel.udel.edu



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Dec 02 2012 - 01:30:03 PST