An Austrian company has developed an intriguing tablet for the blind and visually impaired, using "Smart Liquid" to convert text into braille letters on its display.
The rise of mobile technology has invaded virtually every aspect of our lives, and smartphones and tablets are now nearly ubiquitous. We now have a vast array of information available at our fingertips, but a standard touch screen is useless for the blind and visually impaired.
BLITAB now aims to change that, as it is a haptic tablet that proposes a method of converting text into braille on a tablet's touch screen.
"BLITAB is the world's first tactile tablet for blind and visually impaired people," touts the company. "BLITAB is a next curve Braille device for reading and writing that displays one whole page Braille text, without any mechanical elements."
As the company further explains, the BLITAB is similar to an e-book, but it has a smart liquid display that renders "small physical bubbles" on its surface, instead of using visuals on a traditional LCD screen. Thanks to smart liquid technology, these bubbles turn into text.
"They rise and fall on demand, in a result one whole page can be read and can be written via Braille Perkins Keyboard."
The software can recognize text from an USB drive or a web page and immediately converts it into Braille letters on the screen, marking the first time that blind and visually impaired people would be able to have an overview of an entire document.
Various products so far have tried to provide a Braille interface, but so far such devices have not been accessible and portable enough. Existing Braille displays come in the form of clunky add-ons that integrate with a mobile device or a desktop PC, but they can display only a few characters at a time, not whole documents.
BLITAB, meanwhile, can deliver 13 to 15 lines at a time, integrating Braille straight onto the tablet's screen, without any add-ons.
The company currently has a working prototype of the BLITAB tablet for the blind and visually impaired, but it has yet to bring a final product to market. BLITAB could see a consumer release sometime in 2016, but the firm is still trying to raise some seed-stage funds for this to come true. In the meantime, check out the video below to get a better idea of the concept.
