BrailleWriter
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Georgia Tech researchers turn an iPhone into a Braille writer with BrailleTouch app
It wasn't all that long ago that we saw a student turn a tablet into a Braille writer, and now some researchers from Georgia Tech have done the same thing for smaller touchscreens, too. The Yellow Jackets produced a prototype app, called BrailleTouch, that has six keys to input letters using the Braille writing system and audio to confirm each letter as it's entered. To use the app, you simply turn the phone face down, hold it in landscape mode and start typing. As you can see above, it's currently running on an iPhone, but the researchers see it as a universal eyes-free texting app for any touchscreen. Early studies with people proficient in Braille writing show that typing on BrailleTouch is six times faster than other eyes-free texting solutions -- up to 32 words per minute at 92 percent accuracy. Skeptical of such speeds? Check out the PR and video of the app in action after the break.
Student spends summer turning a tablet into a Braille writer, says mowing lawns is for chumps
Lots of us spend the summer by the pool, sipping Mai Tais and working on our tans, but Adam Duran had better things to do with his vacation. Instead of engaging in such lethargy, Duran attended the Army High Performance Computing Research Center's summer course held at Stanford, where he and his mentors, Sohan Dharmaraja and Adrian Lew, developed a Braille writer app for tablets. You see, the average 8-key Braille writer is a custom laptop that costs $6,000, so given the paltry pricing on today's slates, this new solution is considerably more economical. Users place their fingertips on the display and the app populates keys underneath them, rendering tactile indicators of the keys' location unnecessary. Plus, the virtual keyboard provides a custom fit for your phalanges no matter how big or small they may be. The project has some "technical and legal hurdles to address" before it's made available to the masses, but here's hoping they can clear them soon. Video of the app in action after the break.
Electronics-free $10 Braille writer
If you've ever needed a surefire way to impress a professor, besting his estimates by 80 percent on a project is probably a safe bet. Four mechanical engineering students at The Johns Hopkins University were tasked with developing a simple tool to write in Braille for less than $50, and no electronic components could be used; their portable writing invention checked in at around $10 apiece when mass produced. Typically, computer-assisted and typewriter-style composition is quite costly and isn't very practical for, say, busy blind professionals trying to write on-the-go. Braille letters are traditionally formed by creating up to six impressions -- better known as bumps -- into sequenced cells that form words. The students' writer has six buttons with corresponding pins that can be depressed simultaneously, which makes filling in cells substantially quicker than the traditional "one bump at a time" method. The team recently presented the device to the National Federation of the Blind where board members saw a great deal of promise for the handheld tool, and although commercialization plans have yet to be envisioned, this advancement in Braille transcription is definitely an eye-opener.[Via MedGadget]
