BRAILLE II

BRAILLE II implements a cheap, simple and portable multi-line Braille display compatible with any touch screen device, allowing low-income blind users to get access to education, public services and work opportunities easier than ever. This device is much mechanically simpler than conventional multi-symbol displays, as well as easier and cheaper to produce, making it available to low-income blind users worldwide.

BRAILLE II can also be connected to any touchscreen device (which will send symbols to display), be it a personal phone/tablet, a public info board, electronic transport timetable, a metro map or any other public service. Existing interfaces can be easily adapted to Braille without the need to change interfaces themselves, you just need to add commands sent to BRAILLE II when users touch certain symbols on the screen.

Statistics show that people with visual impairments are often (in some parts of the world - in majority of cases) lack proper opportunities to get education and become a part of the workforce. One of major reasons is the high cost of existing Braille displays (due to mechanical complexity) and the lack of services adapted for them. While this problem may not be as prominent in Western nations (although still very much real), in other, less economically stable regions, blind people may be almost completely excluded from society in all its diversity of opportunities and activities.

For personal development of any human being, it is absolutely necessary to provide means of exploring the world and communicating with it, reading is one of the fundamental tools (even more so for blind people) to do so. However, we also need to take into account financial capabilities of both users, developers and maintainers, since any infrastructure or a public service needs to be maintained, which implies additional spending. A strict requirement would be to provide a fully functional approach to Braille displays that would minimize time and financial investments and at the same time be sustainable in the long run.

There are two categories of people that I'm currently focused on:

1. People that can't afford any Braille displays at all due to low income. For this category of users, BRAILLE II would be extremely useful as it would open countless opportunities to study and work to them, allowing them to be fully integrated in their (and international) society.

2. People that use conventional Braille displays or text-to-speech tools regularly in their line of work. One example of people would be visually impaired journalists. A supervisor of a team of such journalists approached me at an invention fair in Frankfurt where I was presenting my earlier prototypes. He told me that while they are able to do their work, they find existing tools sub-optimal and fundamentally limited. Conventional Braille displays don't have enough symbols on the surface and text-to-speech systems don't provide enough control over the speed and selectivity of the reading process.

Existing single-line displays and attempts at making their multi-line extensions inevitably run into the matter of increasing mechanical complexity, which in turn, either makes the very implementation extremely challenging or increases the price to the point of making the device not affordable to most potential users. These designs get trapped by their starting point, classic displays, which themselves are fundamentally limited and do not scale well. We need to choose a simpler, more abstract starting point if we hope to find a simple solution.

BRAILLE II takes a step back from classic displays and looks closely at the very process of reading Braille, breaking it down to basic requirements. In principle, what users need to do to read is to slide their finger over one symbol at a time in a sequence to get tactile feedback and recognize a pattern corresponding to some text. Only the symbol that is read at this particular moment matters, others may as well not exist. Taking that into account, we arrive to only two necessary elements:

- A single symbol generator with high refresh rate

- A mechanism that slides the generated symbol across user's finger imitating the tactile feedback users would get from reading conventional Braille

The device implements exactly that. User holds the device in one hand and the other hand is used to navigate across the surface of the screen of, let's say, a tablet. Said tablet reads touch coordinates and transmits a corresponding letter to BRAILLE II which is subsequently displayed to the user. Any graphical or console interface can be made available in Braille this way without the need to rework its appearance.

If we look further into possible extensions, the device may also signal clickable links or other special objects on the screen with different vibration patterns.

BRAILLE II can be used in a multitude of situations, from browsing websites to providing output of real-time translation when blind users are traveling, applications are pretty much only limited by developers' fantasy.

Provided solution gives low-income visually impaired people access to education, work opportunities, increased mobility and other basic needs that, in a perfect world, any person should be allowed to have.

While there are numerous respectable attempts at making Braille displays more accessible, I think they focus too much on upscaling existing solutions without considering whether existing displays were fit for extension in the first place, thus automatically imposing their fundamental limitations on their new solutions.

BRAILLE II starts at the higher level of abstraction and is able to achieve the desired result at a fraction of complexity and a fraction of price of not only modern multi-line display proposals, but even old single-line ones. It actually makes the system more affordable and functional while making it simpler than it was.

The end result is more functional, flexible, affordable and low-tech, making Braille displays more accessible and affordable then ever.

The solution is fairly low-tech by modern standards, using only a simple microcontroller to oversee communications with a connected device and to control mechanics, a set of stepper motors and a handful of gears. There is no need for more complex technology here.

The fundamental novelty in this particular solution is that it not only implements a single Braille symbol generator (such things were implemented multiple times before), but does it in such a way that allows us to move generated symbols and essentially automate the "reading" process.

The topic of full-page Braille displays has been very popular for years and seem to only become more popular overtime, which is also confirmed by the amount of different projects worldwide addressing this problem and the amount of funding these projects receive, some cases I have seen got up to a million dollars in advance just after presenting some concepts, without even an idea how to actually implement it.

Now, while this solution can dramatically improve lives of millions of people worldwide, is is still up to the market whether it catches on or not. However, due to the fact that this solution is low-tech and generally mechanically simple, it may just be open-sourced with all models for 3D-printing, electronic component lists and assembly instructions, allowing people to produce their own devices on-demand. If market doesn't see profits in this idea - open source community can still spread the technology and its benefits.

As I'm still at the prototype stage, I'm not directly serving any people right now.

In a year, I'm hoping to finish a separate prototype fitting for live-testing and statistics gathering and establish long-term contacts with education institutions in my city of residence to refine the solution further. At that stage, I'd assume anywhere between 10 and 50 people.

In five years, I'm hoping to put it into production and make it widely available at least to people in countries I'm most familiar with: Germany (as I reside there) and Belarus (my home country). Estimating those numbers is difficult as statistics on blindness are traditionally difficult to find and most of that data being old and incomplete.

All estimates assume I'll still be working on this project alone, if I get some additional support - these numbers will naturally become higher.

My first goal is to promote this technology to make it known worldwide and to get feedback on technology itself, its possible applications, distribution and financial implications. As I can't possibly be an expert in all fields, I'm sure there are multiple aspects of this problem I'm missing.

I want to do a number of live tests in education institutions to gather statistics and improve my solution, particularly ergonomics.

By the end of the five-year period I hope to start manufacturing and distribution of the first generation of devices as well as developing software specifically tailored for it. If it doesn't do well in the market - I'll turn to the open source community and provide all schematics, component lists and assembly instructions freely, allowing people to assemble their own devices even if they are not available on their countries' market.

The biggest obstacle right now is financial. As I am the only member of the team and a student, with all financial implications, I'm lacking access to proper manufacturing tools or funds to obtain them. This slows my progress down as I need to find workarounds for issues and only spend a necessary minimum on raw materials.

As I'm progressing further towards actually launching this product on the market, I will eventually need to address the need for proper knowledge of business processes. While I've dealt with many different areas throughout my career, business was not one of them.

Financial obstacles, while annoying, are not critical, as they only slow me down but don't prevent me from progressing. In a way, that even was a benefit sometimes. One of the reasons I was able to develop a cheap solution was because I just didn't have money to develop an expensive one. That being said, I would still try to find external sources of funding from people interested in this topic as beyond prototyping stage I need funds to actually manufacture the initial batch of devices and refine the concept.

As for being able to navigate in business-related issues, I can take full advantage of the fact that we live in the era of Internet and educate myself, as well as get mentored by my colleagues and family members who also run their own businesses.

While I'm hoping to receive support from Solve, I try to have a plan to move forward without it, albeit slower.

There is only one person at the moment. At the prototyping stage, I'm able to cover all necessary needs by myself.

I have a diverse cross-disciplinary experience, including, but not limited to:

- Medical technology

- Plasma physics research

- Work experience in fields of Electronics, Optics and Mechanics

- Software development

The most important thing that I'd point out is the combination of my degrees in Physics and Information Engineering which allow me to combine analytical abilities of a physicist with technological awareness of an engineer. Physicists tend to analyze problems more fundamentally and potentially arrive at simpler, but more effective solutions.

The last, but not the least thing I'd mention is coming from one of the poorest countries in Europe and having a perspective of a difference of societal engagement between high-income and low-income households, as well as treatment of people with disabilities in underdeveloped countries with weak economy.

None so far, but I'm planning to partner with schools for people with visual impairments through my university's network, I have already found points of contact and am developing a prototype fitting for field tests specifically.

There are two aspects to the intended business model:

- Selling devices themselves

- Developing cloud-based services for said devices, educational materials, work tools etc.

Devices provide a gateway to the market of specially tailored software where main profits would lie, as devices themselves are intended to be cheap to help them become more widespread. It can, in a way, be compared to gaming console manufacturers that sell their hardware at prices below production costs, but get a return on their investment by selling software for their platform.

External investments and donations from people and organizations interested in the topic would be needed for production and shipping of initial batches of devices. 

After a sufficient number of devices is obtained by users, their use of platform-tailored cloud services should start bringing in profits that would eventually cover all production costs and allow the business to expand further not only in terms of quantity of shipped devices, but also development of new types of devices and services for people with impairments.

Any person wishing to make an impact on millions of people's lives would need to network with right people and receive right kind of mentoring. Solve explicitly advertises its mission of improving lives of people worldwide while providing mentoring, media promotion and funding opportunities, making it a great fit for a person with interests such as mine.

I'm particularly interested in two aspects:

- Mentoring on the business side of the matter. I realize that as potentially beneficial for society a solution may be - it is worthless if it can't overcome challenges of the market and reach its end users, I've seen this happen way too many times to have any delusions in that regard.

- Networking with other like-minded people and getting their perspective on my idea. I have great respect for people passionate about improving other people's lives and take their opinions very seriously.

And of course, as small as I would be compared to experienced people from the industry and entire companies, I believe I may still be able to contribute to the community from my side as well.

At the moment, before getting into the business side of things and just finishing the prototype, the most crucial kind of partnerships would be with organizations that are either involved in education for blind people, developing software and/or hardware solutions for them or significantly interact with them in any way (having blind employees, for example).

I can't confidently say what partnerships would be best for later stages as I don't have a good overview of corresponding aspects yet.

I would utilize the prize to fund production of a small batch of devices to perform multiple live tests in parallel for higher efficiency, with several devices we could test their use in education process at the scale of an entire class in real-life conditions as opposed to testing with individual students. In addition to quantity, I could also improve quality of mechanics by ordering parts from specialized manufacturers instead of 3D-printing them myself, making them more reliable. Additional funding also enables more versions of the device, tailored for different kinds of users and more software solutions for them. The prize would also allow me to hire contractors to resolve design issues in aspects that I may not be able to fully fix myself.

I would also get additional training in marked-related topics for a better overview.

I would utilize the prize to fund production of a small batch of devices to perform multiple live tests in parallel for higher efficiency, with several devices we could test their use in education process at the scale of an entire class in real-life conditions as opposed to testing with individual students. In addition to quantity, I could also improve quality of mechanics by ordering parts from specialized manufacturers instead of 3D-printing them myself, making them more reliable. Additional funding also enables more versions of the device, tailored for different kinds of users and more software solutions for them.The prize would also allow me to hire contractors to resolve design issues in aspects that I may not be able to fully fix myself.

I would also get additional training in marked-related topics for a better overview.