Only a tiny amount of blind kids these days are being taught braille, even less are being taught contracted braille.

Yet for those who still know it, and those who seek to reverse the current climate by breaking down the price/usability barrier, a tool like this would be incredibly valuable.

Not only is a braille display non optional for a deafblind person using a computer or smartphone, it's also vital for any blind person to keep their spelling reasonably good, as listening only to speech creates huge gaps in spelling/grammar performance between blind and sighted peers.


In the same way that physically turning the pages of a print book has been shown to improve comprehension, imagination, and focus in sighted people (especially kids) braille does the same for the blind.


It's often impossible for a blind person to achieve a high school level proficiency in math and science without braille. Some can, but generally what happens is that shortcuts and loopholes are used to let the kid pass without it, putting them at a distinct disadvantage in adult life, particularly when it comes to required prerequisites for post secondary education or job training.


Effectively presenting or taking notes without braille can be challenging for blind people, as most of us use screen readers. This essentially means that we are constantly trying to listen and talk, or listen to two things at once.


As I'm sure you already know, much of the world can't afford the high costs of a braille display, and even replacing one as a blind person in the developed world can be impossible if one is no longer eligible (or never was in the first place) for the kinds of programs that often provide them given that most of us are on limited government assistance and have little to no savings as a result.

This essentially means that if you aren't a current student or job seeker for what ever reason, and you don't have the funds to do it your self, you are often out of luck if your braille display breaks or gets too old and warn out. These machines are priced for government and business buyers, not individuals, and so many just sit as wasted potential in closets or storage rooms after problems accumulate.


So yeah, this is a very useful project, even if it may not be viable long term seeing as how things are going in the blind education space. But if you get it to enough people and you fix some of the problems that the Orbit suffers from (painfully hard braille, loud noise when refreshing), and avoid some of the common pitfalls for any similar product (low durability, cells wearing out quickly, non user replaceable battery, unreliable options for repairs, low stock) then you could do allot of good with your talent.

You'll just have to choose your manufacturing and distribution partners well and interview lots of blind people from various backgrounds and experience levels, do a good amount of hands on testing, ETC. It may be a long road, but something like this doesn't really lose it's value within the scope of the market.

I’m an engineer, so let me take a bit of a critical (not aggressive) tone here...

With 40 characters, you would need 320 actuators. Each actuator would require 0.48mm of vertical clearance, and have a distance between any two dots between the same cell of 2.34mm.

But... Maybe you’re ignoring the traditional definition of what a braille pin size, shape, or spacing is. After all there’s still a huge market for teaching devices with non-standard configurations.

Regardless, also would need a microcontroller of some sort. Considering the price point and relative simplicity, I would assume are relying offloading as much as possible, so I’d venture a guess leveraging the USB-HID scan codes as a serial address array to keep your on-device processing to an absolute minimum.

What actuators have you found that would allow you to hit that $50 price target?

If you’ve really cracked this, I’ve got a fair bit of expertise I can throw at this to help out.

Honestly this would be incredibly cool. I love the 2 lines idea, as this more closely mimics the more natural flow of reading paper braille. I'm not sure the economics are viable, but that's not my area of expertise by any means, so I'll just stay within the scope of the question and say from an end user's perspective, this would be incredibly wonderful. If people say they wouldn't use something like this, I would assume that it is due in large part to the cost of obtaining braille easily which in even the cheapest cases is around 500 dollars, and is often more in the multi-thousand. I don't really think we have data about what would happen if braille were readily affordable, though the number of Orbits sold at least gives a good idea that it is something people are interested in.

Please do this. The cheapest Braille display costs around $600-$700 for 20 cells. These Braille displays are the Orbit Reader 20 and the Orbit Reader 20 Plus. While these displays have great software abilities, they only have 20 cells and the cell change is quite loud with no cursor routing buttons. If you are doing extensive reading and writing, 40 cells are ideal. It would be so wonderful to live in a world where electronic Braille access is only $50. This would be the thing that would be a game changer in the Braille literacy world.

Edit: I would also be happy to help as a tester.

When the orbit Reader became available for about £500 GBP it was brilliant. People spend thousands on bigger models for study and work because the government foots the bill, but home reading in Braille has fallen because of the prices. Braille is literacy, simple as that. And although a shockingly-small percentage of blind people read it, to me, I would have a much poorer quality of life without it. I'd love to be involved in any way with this project, because the more Braille devices out there, the better.

As other people have said braille is not actually used that much. I've been completely blind for twenty years and I don't use it. Possibly one of the reasons it isn't is because the displays are so horribly expensive. If you have figured out a way to make one for the price point you mention then that is worth doing.

I don’t know very much braille, but I’m still really interested in this. In fact, if Braille displays were more affordable, I would be more enthusiastic about learning Braille because I could use it more in daily life.

So the bill of materials would be $50 (without the 3D printed housing, I assume?) and one could source and assemble the components? Like a DIY mechanical keyboard?

I could get behind that. I don't even *need* Braille, but for that kind of price, why not?

I support your project 100% and I volunteer to be a tester if you're in need of one.

Personally I'm not a huge fan of braile displays but your idea is great! If you can get it working, those that enjoy braille displays would use your product i'm sure.

One thing you'd want to consider is the softness and hardness of braille, I had a display that was £600 and the braille was so hard and sharp that it acutally hurt my fingers to read. Having a way to ajust the braille display would be great, I believe fredom scientific or whatever they're called these days can do that.

I feel a bit stupid here not engineer or comp s I thinking of teaching assistive tech but this sounds very interesting and very nice as a project I hope it’s successful and I hope these things are up to scratch and if it is its very good.

I second what everyone on here has said: braille is somewhat rare, but mostly because of the costs. If you could make a 40-cell display for $100, or even $200, especially one 5mm tall, that would be amazing and I'd buy one immediately.

I use braille displays for work. For reading emails and articles I usually use speech, but braille is very helpful when coding or just checking how something is spelled. Having two lines would be even better, since I could easily read when an indent is coming up, or could simply read more without scrolling. Two or three lines of 40 cells would be my ideal, because a lot will get cut off with 20 cells, but expanding can come later.

Also, please consider some form of cursor routing. Most displays have a button that can move the cursor to the cell under the button, and each cell has one. If you're reading and find something you have to edit, you just hit the button and are there. Without this, you must arrow to the location, which can be tedious. I've used an Orbit 20, which lacks this feature, and I hated it. That said, if your goal is more of a teaching tool than something people will use for school or professional work, cursor routing doesn't matter as much.

Oh, and I agree that 8 cells is preferable. First, the lower-most row can show a cursor. Second, there are braille codes that use 8 dots. Third, it gives programs more to work with in the future. For instance, maybe a screen reader will one day flash the lower-most dots under a word if it's misspelled.

Anyway, just my thoughts. Thanks for looking into this, and keep us updated on how things go!

I'm tentatively very interested in an idea like this, but skeptical. If it were that easy to do something for the price point you outline, surely someone would have done so by now? I'm not an engineer, just worried about the likelihood it will indeed be as straight-forward as you suggest. Moving pins on the display are traditionally the most expensive part, because each pin requires a separate piezoelectric crystal. How do you envision the pins moving in real-time?

Thank you all for the amazing responses! I have uploaded my project logs in the original post above.