wtm@hnews.fidonet.org (Bill Mcgarry) (02/05/91)
Index Number: 13414
[This is from the Blink Talk Conference]
This article is from the January 7th, 1991 issue of
UNIX Today! and is reprinted with permission.
Copyright 1991, UNIX Today!
TiNi Devising A Better Braille Display
By Mitch Wagner
The Information Revolution is one that is largely passing
the blind by.
Much of the world's expanding store of information is available
only in computer media and accessible only by looking at a display
terminal. if you can't see it, you can't get at it.
Through there now exist devices such as voders, which take ASCII
input and turn it into spoken text, and 20- or 80-character Braille
displays are available, they are slow expensive and unreliable.
An Oakland, Calif., outfit called the TiNi Co. is working to change
that. TiNi is working on a full-sized 80-character-by-25-line
ASCII display that it says can output Braille text at 1,200 to
2,400 baud, and can be manufactured for $1,000 each or less within
five years.
But TiNi has run out of money to finish the research.
TiNi has five full-time employees and a few part-timers. Their
stock in trade is a metal called "Nitinol," a nickel-titanium alloy
that can be annealed to "remember" certain shapes. The annealing
process is simple: You heat the metal to nearly red-hot
temperatures and bend it to the desired shape. After the metal has
been annealed, you cool it down, and you can bend it to a new shape
and then, when it warms up a little bit, it will return to the
shape it was annealed to.
Nitinol is mainly being used in industrial valves. Its chief
consumer application is in novelty items, said A. David Johnson,
president of TiNi.
But one of the applications that Nitinol has been used for is in a
Braille display for computers, said Johnson. It works like this:
Each Braille character is displayed using six small holes in a
rectangular pattern, with a tiny plug in each of the holes. The
plugs are moved in and out of the holes to make the characteristic
patterns of bumps which make up Braille letters and words.
The mechanism used to move each of the plugs in and out is a tiny
cantilever, tugged into place by a hair-thin Nitinol wire that
contracts as it is heated by having an electrical microcurrent
passed through it, said Johnson.
Input is through a standard keyboard.
If TiNi can interest a manufacturer in the technology, it would be
the best-resolution display for the blind available on the mass
market, Johnson said. Other manufacturers have had single-line
Braille displays for several years, priced at $7,000 TO $15,000,
but the displays are difficult to use for word processing and
virtually impossible to use in spreadsheets - two applications that
could easily be done with the TiNi character display.
Each row refreshes in a second, and the entire display can refresh
in three seconds, Johnson said. Each character can refresh in 70
msec, but requires 300 msecs before it can be refreshed again.
Put those numbers together, and what you arrive at is a throughput
rate of somewhere between 1,200 to 2,400 baud, assuming a terminal
in teletype emulation mode. That's a rate that tens of thousands
of people find perfectly acceptable for modeming. More
importantly, it far exceeds the maximum reading rate for Braille
readers, about 150 words per minute, Johnson said.
The display features a RS232 interface, and it can be plugged in to
replace any standard character terminal, without using any special
connections and using only light, easily written special software
adaptations.
"We got our first support from the National Institute of Health in
1986," said Johnson. "We worked on it steadily through 1987, '88
and '89. The project has been dormant for a year, becuase we ran
out of funds." NIH had given TiNi a $450,000 grant to develop the
terminal.
The technical problem proved to be the tiny latches used to keep the
plugs in place after the Nitinol cantilevers had raised the plugs,
said Johnson. They were trickier to make than expected. But TiNi
did manage to make an array that would display three rows of 20
characters each. "That proves that this is viable technology," he
said.
Johnson hopes TiNi's 25-by-80 display would be priced initially at
$10,000. Johnson said he hopes economies of scale could bring the
price down to $4,000, and advances in manufacturing technology
could bring the price down to below $1,000 within five to 10 years.
But the problem is that there is not expected to be a large enough
market for these terminal displays to interest businessmen.
"The blind community would very much like to have a full-page
Braille display," said Johnson. "The problem is, the market for
this device is not enough to bring in heavy-duty capital."
(Mitch Wager is a senior editor at UNIX Today! wagner@utoday)William.Wilson@f89.n129.z1.fidonet.org (William Wilson) (02/05/91)
Index Number: 13455
[This is from the Blink Talk Conference]
BM> TiNi Devising A Better Braille Display
BM> By Mitch Wagner
BM> The Information Revolution is one that is largely passing
BM> the blind by.
David,
It just occured to me as I read that very interesting article
about a full screen braille display that this might not be a bad thing
for the Technical Director of the NFB to look into!
What do you think?
Willie
... BlinkTalk, Dr. Deb and Silver in Pittsburgh!
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