Blind and Visually Impaired Community
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Looking for feedback on braille e-readers and screen readers. I'm interested in attempting to create a simple one (free and open-source) by writing a program to convert text to braille and using Arduino to raise pins for reading. What design advice, thoughts, and concerns do you have? (self.Blind)
submitted by SebTorvaldssen
To clarify, I'm currently thinking of a reader for e-books. One could feed the device an .epub file and it would present the text in braille on the output interface. I'm sighted, so I'm quite unaware of the pros and cons of current solutions for reading (books specifically). This has been on my mind for a few days now, so I just wanted to reach out to the community and gain feedback and knowledge to inform these ideas. Thank you for reading and responding!
DrLuobo 4 points 3y ago
An open source, 3D printed refreshable braille displays sounds very cool. I assume you plan to make the 3D models, PCB designs, and software all open source?
Know that this is an *extremely* ambitious project. I don't wish to discourage you - quite the opposite in fact - I'm curious about your background and where your research leads you. Are you a student in CS/CpE/EE? Is this a uni project? Are you an engineer looking to do this in your spare time or as a side project?
Solid state is your friend. Moving parts will make it a huge pain to assemble, and likely to fail sooner than a solid state device (especially if subject to high g forces).. Piezoelectric components are used in braille displays. More recent prototypes use polymers that change size/state in the presence of an electric field. One motor per pin would not be scalable, so if you're set on motors finding a way to multiplex this would be critical.
Just some other thoughts ..there will be a trade-off between density (characters per line, lines per screen) and cost/complexity/power consumption. Determining what "makes sense" in terms of size can come a little later, once you have a single working character display.
If I were you I'd leave the text conversion part to last. That is a whole other can of worms unrelated to the hardware, with its own issues. Get a sample of braille text and use that for testing first.
I'd be happy to discuss with you more in-depth on the hardware aspect if you'd like after you've done some research.
Know that this is an *extremely* ambitious project. I don't wish to discourage you - quite the opposite in fact - I'm curious about your background and where your research leads you. Are you a student in CS/CpE/EE? Is this a uni project? Are you an engineer looking to do this in your spare time or as a side project?
Solid state is your friend. Moving parts will make it a huge pain to assemble, and likely to fail sooner than a solid state device (especially if subject to high g forces).. Piezoelectric components are used in braille displays. More recent prototypes use polymers that change size/state in the presence of an electric field. One motor per pin would not be scalable, so if you're set on motors finding a way to multiplex this would be critical.
Just some other thoughts ..there will be a trade-off between density (characters per line, lines per screen) and cost/complexity/power consumption. Determining what "makes sense" in terms of size can come a little later, once you have a single working character display.
If I were you I'd leave the text conversion part to last. That is a whole other can of worms unrelated to the hardware, with its own issues. Get a sample of braille text and use that for testing first.
I'd be happy to discuss with you more in-depth on the hardware aspect if you'd like after you've done some research.
SebTorvaldssen [OP] 3 points 3y ago
My idea would be to make this entirely open source; that's a necessary aspect, I think, since I noticed that similar devices in the market are fairly expensive.
I'm beginning to gather the breadth of the project.. especially as I looked into Liblouis (thanks to u/paneulo). I'm a professional software engineer but I enjoy spending my free time on side projects both to learn and to build stuff. I've been brainstorming for an open source side project, whether ambitious or not, that can actually help other people (not just other engineers) and this idea came to me on a plane on Friday.
I looked into this today: http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~djain/media/Tacread/TacRead.pdf
I also checked out some other resources about piezoelectric braille cells. I agree with you about solid state -- it's not realistic/scalable to rely on one motor per pin. I had been imagining one stepper motor per row of 3 pins, with each step displaying 1 of the 8 possible permutations in that row. However, it's clear to me that activating the pins with the presence of an electrical field is an ideal solution.. at least compared to motors, in general. It doesn't stop me from wondering and brainstorming however, because I'd like to see if there's a way to make these devices more accessible (you know, since they're for accessibility).
A single working character display seems like a good start. Before I had even seen what screen readers look like, I had imagined a single character display with rods being raised underneath some sort of membrane (to mimic paper) which displays one character at a time at a given rate.
I'm sure there's complications when it comes to the text conversion - I had hoped that limiting myself to an .epub file reader would mitigate complications, since the format is simpler.
Thanks for offering your thoughts and the prospect of further discussion! This is not yet something I've been devoting significant time to, but it's a project I'm interested in and think would be worth pursuing if it seemed realistic, wise, and helpful.
I'm beginning to gather the breadth of the project.. especially as I looked into Liblouis (thanks to u/paneulo). I'm a professional software engineer but I enjoy spending my free time on side projects both to learn and to build stuff. I've been brainstorming for an open source side project, whether ambitious or not, that can actually help other people (not just other engineers) and this idea came to me on a plane on Friday.
I looked into this today: http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~djain/media/Tacread/TacRead.pdf
I also checked out some other resources about piezoelectric braille cells. I agree with you about solid state -- it's not realistic/scalable to rely on one motor per pin. I had been imagining one stepper motor per row of 3 pins, with each step displaying 1 of the 8 possible permutations in that row. However, it's clear to me that activating the pins with the presence of an electrical field is an ideal solution.. at least compared to motors, in general. It doesn't stop me from wondering and brainstorming however, because I'd like to see if there's a way to make these devices more accessible (you know, since they're for accessibility).
A single working character display seems like a good start. Before I had even seen what screen readers look like, I had imagined a single character display with rods being raised underneath some sort of membrane (to mimic paper) which displays one character at a time at a given rate.
I'm sure there's complications when it comes to the text conversion - I had hoped that limiting myself to an .epub file reader would mitigate complications, since the format is simpler.
Thanks for offering your thoughts and the prospect of further discussion! This is not yet something I've been devoting significant time to, but it's a project I'm interested in and think would be worth pursuing if it seemed realistic, wise, and helpful.
CloudyBeep 2 points 3y ago
.epub files can be hard because of the possibility of inaccessibility, but it would be an ideal format for an e-book reader.
DrLuobo 1 points 3y ago
Sounds like you have a good base to start from and are genuinely interested. This sub gets posts all the time from (surely well-intentioned) people who want to make a cool new app or assistive hardware for blind/VI, and many are students looking for a senior project or something. I am a computer engineering professor in the US and get questions like this in my day-to-day life too, once students find out about my eyesight (or, lack of it). So, again, don't want to discourage (it's kinda my job to *encourage* such things :) ), and I'm happy to offer design advice as needed if you're serious about it being open source.
DariusA92 2 points 3y ago
I don't have any exportese, but I wonder if it's possible to have a plate of multiple lines of braille made up of pins that don't have any power of moving themselves, only the mechanical capability of locking pins in the up or down position. Then have a piece with only one line of actually moving pins. It could move under the plate on a pare of rails and use its own pins to push the pins on the current line to the appropriate up and down position and then switch the mechanical lock on that line to keep dots in that position. Then go down to do the same for other lines. It would first of all, make the device much cheaper, because it would only have, say, 40 cells. Secondly, because of being a multiple line device, it would offer a much more pleasant experience. And finally, it would use little energy because after the page is loaded, the device doesn't need to be active, because the mechanical lock for each line keep the dots in their place. Not sure how possible such a design would be though.
SebTorvaldssen [OP] 1 points 3y ago
This is an interesting idea to imagine, since it reminds me of how many displays refresh their pixels.. namely, a scan from top to bottom. The difference is that those screens refresh using electric currents rather than mechanical pieces.. meaning that the refresh rate of a device like this would be significantly slower and likely very taxing on the parts involved. I’m a software engineer (not mechanical), so I can’t provide much more insight here.. but I like the out-of-the-box thinking. Thanks for sharing!
paneulo 2 points 3y ago
Google Liblouis. This is the c lib used by many screen readers to produce braille.
SebTorvaldssen [OP] 1 points 3y ago
Thank you for this!
CloudsOfMagellan 2 points 3y ago
Current designs use pesoelectric crystals that expand to raise the pins, what other method will you use that is cheaper
SebTorvaldssen [OP] 3 points 3y ago
Very good to know. I still need to explore questions like this, but I don't yet know what I need to be aware of. I imagine I'll need to design some mechanical way to raise the pins using simple motors unless research uncovers a better method. I think it could be cool to release these designs so that people with 3D printers can assemble the necessary components. Thanks for bringing it up!
CloudyBeep 1 points 3y ago
Other people have already answered your question, but I'll give some explanation.
Liblouis is a free print-to-braille and braille-to-print translation engine that you can implement in your product. However, current refreshable braille technology is quite expensive because the cells need to last a long time and refresh quickly.
For cheaper braille technology, have a look at the Orbit Reader 20 and Canute 360.
Liblouis is a free print-to-braille and braille-to-print translation engine that you can implement in your product. However, current refreshable braille technology is quite expensive because the cells need to last a long time and refresh quickly.
For cheaper braille technology, have a look at the Orbit Reader 20 and Canute 360.
SebTorvaldssen [OP] 2 points 3y ago
Great insights; very helpful. Thank you!
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