Re: different ways to emboss braille
Yeah, slate just refers to the backing surface that supports the paper. You're not penetrating the slate itself. There are also drawing slates that are sort of like a rubbery clipboard, but I found those less pleasant than the cover of a cloth-coated binder, for drawing anyway.
And also yeah, it's kinda tedious to write braille by hand, and you do go right-to-left instead of left-to-right.
Whatever became of that embosser made from Legos? Was that actually the least bit innovative, or was it the equivalent of a science fair model that the media thought could make some ad money?
I remember something about the Canute doubling as an embosser, but I'm not sure of the practicality. Also, is the Canute more than a proof-of-concept?
Then there's capsule paper. You could just print Braille onto it via a printer with carbon-based ink, then run it through a capsule paper machine to get braille that way. While those machines seem to cost a "mere" $10k or so, compared to the Brand New Car / Kinda Old House price of an embosser, that sounds like a much better deal. It even does illustrations, after all. But the paper is over a dollar per sheet, and I seem to remember the machine frequently malfunctioning back in the day, and is there good software for printing properly formatted Braille? Yeah, there are Braille fonts and such, but I'm talking something like "format with Duxbury, send to printer instead of embosser".
Also, in such an expensive field, you'd expect people to try to cut costs when possible, and yet the only instance I can think of in which someone actually took the capsule paper route is a major engineering college. Now, considering how the assistive tech market interacts with businesses, education, and government, I wouldn't be surprised if this is not because of some fundamental flaw with the idea, and instead is due to institutional inertia. But it's better to first assume the professionals know what they're doing and aren't just leaving money on the ground, until stronger evidence appears.
cost analysis estimations: $10k for the machine, vs $45k for a cheap/reused/something embosser. 200 sheets of Braille paper is, what, $15? Vs $230 for 200 sheets of capsule paper. So $50k could buy around $40k pages of capsule braille, vs over 600k pages of embossed braille. ... really? Am I doing that math right? ^Those page counts feel off. Oh, and let's not forget the expected lifetime of the device, cost of maintenance, electricity usage, printer heads for the capsule pages, etc.
So if my numbers are right, and you actually can find a decent embosser for $45k, which is the better deal depends entirely on how much you plan to do with it vs how much money it brings in. If you're a publisher sending out menus all over the world, or embossing another thousand copies of the Bible, or warehouses full of textbooks, you probably want to go with the embosser. If you're an individual, small company, or expect to need lots of illustrations on short notice, you might be better off with the capsule paper machine.
Bla, that means that Braille comicbooks would go for, like, $2/page, and most print comicbooks ... vary in length, but let's say 30 pages for the monthly issues? Times 3 for Braille, and that's being generous given that we're trying to translate a highly visual medium to the lowest detail tactile medium, and that's $200 per issue. Well, crap. Guess it's time to ask Audible and Dollar Shave Club if they want to put ads in Braille comicbooks.
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