Researchers develop braille for vibrating touchscreen devices

In braille, a character is made up of six dots laid out on a two by three matrix -- not something that can really be conveyed using capacitive touchscreen technology. Working with a Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, researchers in Finland have developed a method for piezoelectric touchscreen devices that uses a single pulse of intense vibration to convey a raised dot, and a longer vibration made up of several weaker pulses to represent a missing dot -- spelling out letters that can be easily read by touch. It took a while for volunteers to get used to this method, but once they had they were able to read a character in as little as 1.25 seconds. Now that they have letters down, the team is moving on to words and sentences -- with an eye towards developing text-to-braille software sometime in the future.

[Quantumphysics @ Mar 31st 2009 11:33AM]

Considering touchscreen phones have varying resolutions, I'm not sure how this would work as an APP. I think it would only make sense if the entire OS was written for it.

Sad truth is, you can't enjoy a touchscreen phone unless you have sight.

IMOB 123751495

[Wwhat @ Mar 31st 2009 11:46AM]

Read the article again.

[mike @ Mar 31st 2009 3:49PM]

@Wwhat: I know... That guy must have been first cuz he doesnt read...

[Shinigami @ Mar 31st 2009 6:14PM]

1.25 sec per symbol = up to 3.3 minutes per SMS.
Hours for an article. In one word: slow.

The idea isn't bad and it makes me happy to know someone is caring for those who are different from majority of us. But, IMO, adaptation isn't the best way here, it would be better if they made a new kind of touch screen with raising pins.

[Jimmy Jones @ Mar 31st 2009 11:42AM]

Wait till Apple tries to get hold of this and then incorporate it into its fruity things... and then later try to "We Invented This!" and then the lifetime fanbois of the fruity company go haywire.

[Jon @ Mar 31st 2009 11:45AM]

It's always funny how often it's not the fanboys who bring up Apple...

[7egend @ Mar 31st 2009 11:47AM]

@Jon

Agreed.

[sockatume @ Mar 31st 2009 11:44AM]

The fun part is that this idea needn't require a screen at all. You could just put a touch-panel - of the more sensitive capacitive kind, say, although that might interfere with a braille-reader's expectation of applying pressure - on the device somewhere. It'd be significantly slimmer and more robust than existing "braille displays". Whether it's worth the tradeoff, I don't know.

[sockatume @ Mar 31st 2009 11:46AM]

My bad, I misunderstood how the device works here. I assumed it vibrated the whole device or display to give the signal, as the finger touched the right portions of it.

[cristian baltatescu @ Mar 31st 2009 11:47AM]

Could this be the first step towards a really useful touchscreen?
I mean i always liked the idea, but the fact that you can't really use devices without physical keyboards because you can't really sense the limits of the pretty graphical buttons always put me off.
This could be a neat addition to a touchscreen, imagine the buttons getting a thin 0.3-0.5 mm raised border or smth, when you need it.

[Jonathan @ Mar 31st 2009 11:49AM]

I can't see the point of this.

[7egend @ Mar 31st 2009 11:51AM]

"I can't see the point of this."

ha ha i get it, really...not very funny.

[MioTheGreat @ Mar 31st 2009 4:21PM]

Then you haven't given it any thought at all.

People have been working on ways to sort of simulate tactile feedback, a very essential thing on any interface, for touchscreens for a while. Faux raised buttons, anyone?

[FOREX @ Mar 31st 2009 11:50AM]

Not only is this really cool for blind people but this could also change how people with sight use their phones. What if they could get a system that displayed shapes and contours on your phone. Then you could "feel" the icons or keyboard on a touch screen phone. Or dial without looking at the keypad because it feels like buttons are actually there. That would be really revolutionary.

[teamallyn @ Mar 31st 2009 11:52AM]

I wonder how fast 1.25 seconds is compared to normal braille. If it really takes 1.25 seconds for each character, it would take almost 14 minutes to read this article.

[Brawny @ Mar 31st 2009 12:21PM]

Anyone well-familiar with braille can recognize a letter just as fast as you looking at it.

[r3ap3r @ Mar 31st 2009 12:38PM]

Actually, there are 665 characters with no spaces, and 807 characters with. Considering that a blank space would take at least .5 seconds to "clear" the last letter and leave a blank space (and then that blank space "read), you get:

(665 * 1.25) + (142 * .5) / 60

= 831.25 + 71 / 60

= 15.0375 minutes... over 15 minutes.

[Xenoterranos @ Mar 31st 2009 2:15PM]

Roughly 3.2 bytes per second.

[EricLMcCormick @ Mar 31st 2009 12:11PM]

I'm pretty sure this exited a long time ago... i think it goes by the name Morse Code!

[Matt @ Mar 31st 2009 12:13PM]

Wouldn't it be more efficient just to use Morse Code? Seems like a less complicated method of doing the exact same thing. Though I guess using Morse would require blind folks to learn a whole new method of spelling out letters, so maybe not. Just a thought.

[darkstar @ Mar 31st 2009 1:23PM]

i agree! this does not make any sense. morse code is a lot faster!

before reading, i thought they made a screen that can morph into bumps

[jccalhoun @ Mar 31st 2009 2:10PM]

It is the circle of life. If I recall the inventor of Braille was inspired by Morse Code. So now these guys have been inspired by Braille to invent Morse Code!

[teamallyn @ Mar 31st 2009 2:20PM]

.. / /// / ./ ./.. ./.. /.// ./ //. ./. . . ./././

[Joe Anstine @ Mar 31st 2009 3:15PM]

thats pretty sick and could have some really cool implications in the future for touchscreens not only on phones but other devices as well

[granny down east @ Mar 31st 2009 4:06PM]

@teamallyn, me too.
My daughter could use this device and make us all look like fools.

[Overgauss @ Mar 31st 2009 4:16PM]

I'm working on Haptibraille (copyright Overgauss Technologies) but am coming at it vibrational braille from several different angles such that the language translates easily between worn and held devices.

People should be able to interact with their devices unobtrusively without bystanders being clued into what is going on by visual or audio cues. In this way a device could talk to its owner discretely.

The device could read a book, interact with Frink the programming language to perform calculations, or direct the user to waypoints via haptic feedback.

Initially input to the device would require non-discrete finger waving of sorts in the form of a virtual keyboard that won't require a surface. That is until I learn how to parse brain wave forms as means of user input to the device.

Realistically this would take some time to build as I'm only an undergrad EE/BME (junior technically). On the plus side I have access to V.I. testers and once I have sufficient momentum would not be opposed to making this an open source project. From my time (years) working with the blind and V.I. I have seen how this disability allows companies to charge outrageous prices for technologies far far away from cutting edge.

This behavior is in-excusable and I aim to fix that. Just because the VI are blind does not mean that they are fair game, nor should they be.

[John @ Mar 31st 2009 4:45PM]

id rather see these researchers working on ways to get blind people to see.

[rmurray_ @ Mar 31st 2009 9:36PM]

Just add a speaker and just have the computer read the text to them. Hasn't that been around for awhile?

[Macbeth @ Apr 1st 2009 1:36AM]

So they combined Braille and added Morse code to it, why didn't someone think of this sooner?

[Benson @ Apr 1st 2009 10:21AM]

Morse code would be sane, if vibrating a touchscreen were the only option. But I think TTS would be better yet (no learning curve for non-hams, and way faster than this). It looks to me like one of those projects more motivated by available funding than practicality.

[alexander_h @ Apr 4th 2009 4:07AM]

It's a three by two matrix going by the picture, not two by three.