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| Edited By: Rito Paul |Source: DNA |Updated: Nov 24, 2011, 01:55 AM IST
When 21-year-old Sourabh Sanyal went to visit a school for the visually impaired in Delhi and saw the students there thumbing through coarse pages of voluminous Braille books, he thought he could do better. And so he did.
Sanyal made a prototype of a refreshable Braille refreshable (RBD) using a 5x5 array of electromagnetic actuators that takes up input image, processes it and produces tactile output on a computer screen — a sort of digital reader for the blind.
In a country where there are over 13 crore visually impaired people, this technology could be an important tool in the way they are able to access information.
RBD is not a new technology, but is an expensive one. An imported RBD device costs about Rs 3 lakh-5 lakh.
Sanyal’s device, when it is ready for the market, will cost only Rs50,000-60,000, he claims.
It’s not only the low cost of the product that makes Sanyal’s device unique. “Existing RBDs are only able to display text. This device will be able to display text as well as shapes of different kinds which will enhance the experience for the user” he said. Sanyal is able to achieve this by packing a higher number of braille dots on a single page than most RBDs.
“I found that with thick books and expensive RBDs, the teachers are only able to teach a limited number of things to blind students. I hoped that with this device that the blind or the visually impaired will get a much better education and their literacy rate will go up,” Sanyal added.
