Tactile - Perceived by Touch

Tactile - Perceived by Touch.
Portable scanner taking picture of a section of a book - 2/20/2016
Third Prototype Braille Reader - 2/20/2016
Third Prototype Braille Reader - 2/20/2016
Second Prototype Braille Reader in Progress - 2/13/2016
First Prototype Braille Reader Top View - 2/13/2016
First Prototype Braille Reader Side View - 2/13/2016
Program the connection to the Braille Reader - 2/13/2016
Text recognition is working! - 2/13/2016
Taking a picture of the text - 2/13/2016

Inspiration

Many people know the saying that knowledge is power, and the key access to knowledge is through books. However, there are 285 million visually impaired people around the world, with 130,000 visually impaired people in the U.S. alone. Many visually impaired have to read through Braille texts or listen to audio files, and unfortunately less than 1% of all books are in Braille and less than 30% of all books have an audio version. In addition, Braille displays and embossers cost thousands of dollars, making them inaccessible to many of the visually impaired people living in developing countries. The mission of Tactile is to empower the visually impaired through education equality by enabling them to have the opportunity to access all printed texts.

What it does

Our innovation allows real-time conversion of printed text to Braille. Ultimately, a visually impaired person would use the portable scanner to scan the text from the spine of a book to the outer edge of the book. The scanner would transfer information to a refreshable Braille display wirelessly, and the visually impaired would be able to read the Braille text and repeat the same process to read the next page.