Hello listers,
Monday's New York Times contained the following piece reporting on a new
Braille display patent. The technology's interesting; the errors in
the story may not be.
--Bryan Bashin
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NEW YORK TIMES
Monday, April 7th, 1997
Patents: Creating Braille
Electronically
By SABRA CHARTRAND
Hndreds of thousands of blind Americans read by
using Braille. In 1990, 4.3 million people had severe
vision loss, and 512,000 of those were blind in both
eyes.
But that does not mean they can read easily. Fluency in
Louis Braille's 1825 system can be difficult without a lot of
practice. Mastering the system of one to six embossed dots
arranged in two columns of three dots each to represent letters and
words requires diligent repetition. A similar system of eight
dots in two columns of four each is used for mathematical symbols
and to represent ASCII, the generic computer code.
But many blind people cannot spend as much time reading
Braille as they might like because the "cost of Braille means
it's not even affordable to most sight-impaired people," said Marvin
Cowens, a polymer chemist at Texas Instruments Inc. Together
with Alan Gilkes and Larry Taylor, Cowens has won a patent for a
display that creates renewable, raised dots on computer monitors
and other screens.
Braille books and other printed materials are expensive
to produce and own. The printing process is costly, the
bulky books require extra storage space and the dots can begin
to deteriorate after only a few readings. Braille systems
for display screens exist, Cowens said, but they are complex
machines that can cost $5,000 to $10,000 each.
"They're a mechanical nightmare to me," he said. Cowens,
whose sight is normal, is trying now to learn Braille
using the current technology. "They rely on mechanical pegs that
stick up and have a lot of moving parts."
In addition to being expensive, the mechanical system
also displays only one line of text per screen, making it
cumbersome for Braille readers to scan a page or search for
information in a document.
Yet the American Federation for the Blind says 85
percent of people who use Braille as their primary method of
reading and are Braille literate have jobs. So Braille fluency can
make a big difference in the life of a blind or visually impaired
person.
The Texas Instruments invention "consists of a matrix of
small cavities, each containing a positive and negative
electrode, and filled with a small quantity of polar organic gel
responsive to electric fields," the patent explains. A taut film is
spread over the matrix to seal the cavities and keeps each one flat.
"Each cavity is individually addressable by electronic
means," the patent continues. "When voltage is applied to the
electrodes in a cavity, the gel in that cavity expands sufficiently to
raise a dimple in the elastomeric film."
The cavities are cylindrical in shape, with metal
electrodes embedded on the floor and one side. They create dots in
the standard Braille size of 1.5 millimeter, but can be
adjusted to other sizes -- such as larger dots for those with less
sensitive fingertips. The circuitry that delivers electricity to
the gel can also cause the dots to vibrate, so letters or words can be
"highlighted." The computer can also register when dots
have been touched, so it will know when a word has been read
or when to turn a page. Users might also be able to design
and customize their own Braille systems.
The company says the displays can make word-processing, spread sheets,
graphs, CD-ROM materials, e-mail and online data bases accessible to Braille readers. Books and
other paper documents could be scanned into a computer equipped with
the Braille display. The screen can run Braille in English or other
languages. Special software programs will command the computer to convey Braille dot instructions, rather than
the alphabet, to the screen.
Texas Instruments believes its system will help
organizations, buildings and device manufacturers comply with the
Americans With Disabilities Act. But it may be a while before the
company has a product to offer.
"We aren't selling anything yet," Cowens said of the
invention. He also did not want to guess what a Braille personal
computer or laptop display would cost consumers, other than to
say it would be "substantially less" than current systems.
"We have proved the feasibility of the system, but
there's still a lot of work to be done, he said. "We're still in the
laboratory."
Cowens, Gilkes and Taylor received patent 5,580,251.
Patents are available by number for $3 from the
Patent and Trademark Office, Washington, D.C.
20231.
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