Students Develop Braille App
by Jessica Fuhlat University of Southampton 11th October 2011 11:56:41
A Braille writer app for tablets has been developed by students at Stanford University.
The students designed the technology during their summer, whilst attending the Army High Performance Computing Research Centre summer school.
The app developed for the tablet allows users to place their fingertips on the screen, where it populates keys beneath them, making tactile indicators of the keys’ location unnecessary.
It can be used for ipads, androids and other mobile phones.
The virtual keyboard is also custom-made to fit the size of the user’s fingers.
The average 8-key Braille writer is a custom laptop with a price tag of $6,000.
Adam Duran designed the technology. He said: ‘Our app is the fraction of the cost and can do so much more.’
He added, ‘Instead of making fingers find the buttons, we’ve made buttons that find the fingers.
‘Just because you are visually impaired, doesn’t mean you have anything less to offer. Who knows that we’ll see as a result of this.’
