Full-Sized, Refreshable Braille Displays on the Way
While current refreshable Braille displays are only able to show one line of text at a time, technological advances will allow for a full screen Braille display to show all of the text displayed at one time.
Peichun Yang, the man behind the development of this new display, says, “If you add another line, that’s a big help. A full page; that’s another world.” His new design would be a massive leap forward for this device. The display would consist of many, tightly packed, container-like nodes that are filled with a liquid. When an electric current is applied to the node, it contracts and pushes the liquid upwards into a small bead reservoir, creating a tactile bump. It is, as Yang calls it, a “hydraulic and locking mechanism.” These small bumps would combine to create Braille letters and even the outline of pictures, so that images would essentially appear as they would on regular computer monitors. With this system, the display would be capable of refreshing in milliseconds, allowing the user to read with almost no noticeable pause whatsoever.
While this product is still in early development, Yang and his colleagues hope that a fully functional demo display will be available in one to two years, with a finished product ready to be sold to consumers arriving on shelves within five years.
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