Students design portable Braille label maker

(PhysOrg.com) -- A device that started out as a class project last fall is moving rapidly toward becoming a commercial product that could make the lives of millions of visually impaired people a bit easier.

New electrically activated material could improve braille readers

Refreshable braille displays translate information from computer screens into raised characters, often along the bottom of a keyboard. But this technology can cost thousands of dollars and is limited, typically displaying ...

Kriyate Design Solutions testing first Braille smartphone

(Phys.org) —Indian company Kriyate Design Solutions, headed and run by post-graduate student Sumit Dagar, has built a prototype Braille smartphone that makes use of a type of shape metal alloy to cause pins to raise and ...

Georgia Tech develops braille-like texting app (w/ video)

Imagine if smartphone and tablet users could text a note under the table during a meeting without anyone being the wiser. Mobile gadget users might also be enabled to text while walking, watching TV or socializing without ...

Stanford summer course yields touchscreen Braille writer

Each summer, under the red-tiled roofs and sandstone of Stanford, the Army High-Performance Computing Research Center (AHPCRC) invites a select group of undergraduates from across the country gather for a two-month immersion ...

Snail Braille reader could read books to the blind

(PhysOrg.com) -- To most of us, Braille is largely a mystery. It feels really cool, but the idea of actually reading it is kind of a pipe dream. Our sense of touch simply is not as sensitive as that of a blind person. That ...

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Braille

The Braille system is a method that is widely used by blind people to read and write, and was the first digital form of writing.

Braille was devised in 1825 by Louis Braille, a blind Frenchman. Each Braille character, or cell, is made up of six dot positions, arranged in a rectangle containing two columns of three dots each. A dot may be raised at any of the six positions to form sixty-four (26) possible subsets, including the arrangement in which no dots are raised. For reference purposes, a particular permutation may be described by naming the positions where dots are raised, the positions being universally numbered 1 to 3, from top to bottom, on the left, and 4 to 6, from top to bottom, on the right. For example, dots 1-3-4 (⠍) would describe a cell with three dots raised, at the top and bottom in the left column and on top of the right column, i.e., the letter m. The lines of horizontal Braille text are separated by a space, much like visible printed text, so that the dots of one line can be differentiated from the Braille text above and below. Punctuation is represented by its own unique set of characters.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA