Part of the problem is that creating Braille texts is costly, greatly limiting choices for the visually impaired. Studies have shown that Braille literacy significantly improves employment opportunities for the blind - but right now, less than 10% of blind Americans can read it. In a world of audiobooks and text-to-audio technology, why is Braille still important? Though audio systems are easier to use, they don't instill the same understanding of language as a written system like Braille does. Though the current version is limited in the number of characters it can translate and display, the team hopes to make the device capable of scanning an entire page at a time and displaying two lines of text at once. Next, the text is translated into Braille, and a mechanical system raises and lowers pins on the surface of the Tactile that form the characters to be read by one's fingertips. Here's how it works: The device has an internal camera that takes photos of the printed text, which is then converted into digital text using optical character recognition software. Team Tactile was one of the winners of the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize this year for their creation, which translates printed text into the raised-dot language. An all-woman team of six engineering undergraduate students at MIT has created an inexpensive, hand-held device prototype that provides real-time translation of printed text to Braille - which could greatly increase accessibility of written materials for the blind.

Braille translation software