Today, blind people fluent in Braille can read computer screens s
through refreshable displays that convert words to raised dots – but
only one line at a time.
For the sighted, imagine a Kindle that presents just 40 characters per
page, says Sile O’Modhrain, an associate professor of Music, Theatre
and Dance at U-M, who is blind. Forty characters amounts to about 10
words.
The process is slow. It doesn’t give context. It’s expensive. And
O’Modhrain believes it's one of the factors contributing to Braille’s
declining use. Even though fluency in the nearly 200-year-old code is
linked with higher employment and academic performance for the
visually impaired, fewer blind people are learning and using it.
Taking Braille’s place are text-to-speech programs that make it easier
and faster to consume electronic information, but at the same time,
hold back literacy.
So O’Modhrain, who is also in the School of Information, has teamed up
with engineering researchers to build a better Braille display – one
that could show the equivalent of a whole Kindle screen at once. In
addition, it could translate beyond text, rendering graphs, charts,
spreadsheets, maps and complicated equations in a medium the blind
could more fully understand with their fingertips.
“What we’re trying to build in this project is full-page tactile
screen for something like a Kindle or an iPad where you could just
display refreshable text in real time,” O’Modhrain said. “Relative to
what’s done today, and how that’s done, it’s a complete paradigm
shift.”
In the 1950s, about half of blind children learned to read Braille,
according to the National Federation of the Blind. Today, that number
is just 10 percent. Yet 80 percent of the blind people who are
employed know Braille. Those numbers don’t tell the whole story, as
definitions and health outcomes have evolved over the years. But the
trend they suggest is real.
“When you’re learning to read and write, it’s hard to find a
substitute for physically encounter text – whether it’s in visual or
tactile form,” O’Modhrain said. ”There are many studies that show that
listening to something is not the same as reading it.”
The system she is developing with Brent Gillespie, an associate
professor of mechanical engineering, and Alex Russomanno, a doctoral
student in the same department, would make e-reading for the blind
more efficient and a lot less expensive. Today’s commercial one-line
Braille displays cost around $5,000. If you were to directly scale up
the mechanism behind it to show a whole page, it would cost around
$50,000, Russomanno says. The U-M researchers’ aim to offer that
capability at just $1,000 per device.
How can they make a bigger display at a fraction of the cost? Their
answer is microfluidics – a branch of science and engineering that
involves specially etched chips with tiny channels that guide flows
of liquid or air. Microfluidic chips are modeled and made like the
integrated circuits of computers. They are printed rather than
assembled.
“We use the equivalent of electronic logic and circuitry,” Russomanno
said. “When I say that, I’m referring to the way a computer works,
with transistors and resistors, except ours is not electronic at all.
It’s fluidic. Instead of high voltage and low voltage you have high
pressure and low pressure, and instead of electric current flow you
have fluid flow and you can achieve the same basic logic features.”
And like the 0s and 1s that undergird computing, Braille is a binary
code. Each Braille cell (which is sometimes a letter and sometimes a
whole word) contains six dots that can be either raised or flat to
convey different information.
Michigan engineers have developed technology that may soon lead to a
refreshable braille tablet the size of a Kindle.
“The dots are either there or they’re not,” O’Modhrain said. “That’s
why this circuit is so elegant.”
With just two input valves, the researchers are able to generate more
than 50 different dot states. The valves move fluid that controls tiny
bubbles that raise or lower dots.
At this point, they've shown that they can drive the dots with
bubbles, and that they can print a microfluidic device that could let
them efficiently control those bubbles. Over the next year, they'll be
working to integrate the two and produce a larger prototype.
"We would like to think a device like this would make reading
electronic Braille more attractive again, make it close to the
experience of reading a traditional book," O'Modhrain said. "Another
challenge is convincing educational authorities to teach Braille
again. It has dropped out of the system in terms of the education of
blind people and we think it’s important to bring Braille back."
About Michigan Engineering: The University of Michigan College of
Engineering is one of the top engineering schools in the country.
Eight academic departments are ranked in the nation's top 10 -- some
twice for different programs. Its research budget is one of the
largest of any public university. Its faculty and students are making
a difference at the frontiers of fields as diverse as nanotechnology,
sustainability,
healthcare, national security and robotics. They are
involved in spacecraft missions across the solar system, and have
developed partnerships with automotive industry leaders to transform
transportation.
Its entrepreneurial
culture encourages faculty and
students alike to move their innovations beyond the laboratory and
into the real world to benefit society. Its alumni base of nearly
70,000 spans the globe.
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Poetry and Hums aren’t things which you get, they’re things which get
you. And all you can do is go where they can find you.”
― Winnie the Pooh
Terry Bartlett
Ph: +6434847487
Fax: +6434847145
Mobile: +64212063874
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