TJ students invent a cheaper braille reader for the blind
Two juniors at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology have invented a device that makes it easier and more affordable for blind people to read braille.
Anush Devkar and Ansh Malhotra gave a presentation on their device, Braillesense, at MIT in October. They were invited to demonstrate Braillesense at a research conference at Princeton next week.
The cost of current machines on the market that translate text to braille, a tactile language based on combinations of six raised dots, starts at $2,000, while Braillesense is about $125.
Ansh got the idea for a cheaper, braille reader after visiting a school for the blind in India a couple of years ago. “The kids and teachers were excited about getting a refreshable braille reader. This was a big deal for them. I thought it was completely ridiculous that they could only afford one of them for the whole school,” he said.
“I thought all visually impaired individuals should have access to this,” Ansh says. He and Anush reinvented the internal mechanism of braille readers to create their device.
Braillesense connects to a phone or computer to translate written text into Braille dots. It uses a custom computer-aided manufacturing system to convert rotational motion to vertical displacement of the braille pins, allowing for real-time updates on the braille display.
The AI-powered platform they developed uses large language models to provide personalized feedback, adjusting the speed to match users’ reading pace. Their technical paper on Braillesense provides more details.
They used 3D printing to create a prototype. “We reached out to multiple individuals and received positive feedback,” says Anush.
“We’re finalizing the design and want to start scaling up,” Ansh says. Eventually, they hope to secure a patent.
“We want to get it out into the world,” says Anush. “We hope to completely change the industry.” Their goal is to make literacy “more accessible and easier to navigate for the visually impaired.”
4 responses to “TJ students invent a cheaper braille reader for the blind”
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Excellent. Blind children need to learn to read Braille and more books and so on need to be made available in Braille as audio recordings are difficult to use for many and do not work for the deaf and blind.
Sounds like a wonderful invention! Congratulations to these two young men. I hope this is just the beginning of very successful careers for both of them and I hope Braillesense will be able to make life a little easier for all blind people.
SO freaking cool! Rock on and keep improving the world!
This is wonderful! Thanks for reporting on it. I took the course for manually transcribing Braille books for visually impaired people many decades ago; it was a slow, labor intensive process back then. Now it will be infinitely better.