Virtual Braille Opens Employment Doors for Visually Impaired
From: ITworldcanada.com - 01/09/2007
By: Nestor A. Arellano

McGill University researchers are developing an inexpensive tactile
translation system called Virtual Braille (VB) designed to enable
sight-impaired users to read what is on a computer screen. McGill Centre for
Intelligent Machines director Vincent Hayward says the model currently being
developed, Stimulator of Tactile Receptor by Skin Stretch squared (STReSS2),
is "a smaller and simpler device with fewer moving parts" than others on the
market. The prototype's interface pad contains 64 miniature ceramic slabs
called "benders" that move laterally as the device detects words on the
computer screen, translating the text into Braille. As the benders contact a
user's finger tips, they create Braille through temporary "lateral skin
deformations." Users keep their finger tip on the pad, which they move
mouse-like across a surface, unlike other computer Braille readers that
require users to move their finger across a pad to feel the dots. The team is
looking into implementing the technology into a mouse, which would allow
users to scan the entire screen, rather than limiting them to a single line
at a time, although the researchers must figure out how to prevent the user
from "getting lost" on the page. Canadian National Institute for the Blind
(CNIB) Library in Toronto manager Debbie Gillespie says that with this mouse
concept, "You could have an entire screen of information literally at your
fingertips." CNIB national director of consumer goods and assistive
technologies Jeff Fitzgibbon explains that today's tactile translation
devices run from $5,000 to above $10,000, discouraging companies from hiring
the blind. He says, "Anything that can be done to make information more
readily available will have a definite positive effect on the society, labor
and the economy."  

Read the entire article at:
http://www.itworldcanada.com/a/News/ec17ecfd-664f-49ba-b63b-e929c6524835.html

Links:
Virtual Braille Display
http://www.cim.mcgill.ca/~vleves/homepage/research/vbd/

A Haptic Memory Game using the STRESS2 Tactile Display
http://www.cim.mcgill.ca/~jay/index_files/pub_files/QW-VL-JP-VH-CHI06.pdf

Vincent Hayward
http://www.cim.mcgill.ca/~hayward/
