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Samsung Touchable Ink

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92 pointsmatant15 comments

Smart phone apps for the blind are great and important but from what I've read they don't seem to be having the impact on blind employment that Braille has had.

74% of the blind are unemployed [1] (there is another figure you will occasionally see of 13% unemployment for the blind, that's a US Government statistic that excludes anyone not considered in the list of potentially employed people).

Braille literacy is highly correlated with employment among the blind, and rates of Braille literacy are falling rapidly in the US, from a peak of around 50% in the 1950's to more like 12% today [1].

Hopefully someone here will know of a survey reporting measurable economic gains for the new generation of Braille-illiterate technologically assisted blind, thus far what I've heard anecdotally on that front has not been encouraging.

[1] http://www.nbp.org/ic/nbp/braille/needforbraille.html

I've always been curious about the impact of smartphones on blinds. A famous french singer said it was a bliss to be able to ask Siri for informations or having the phone vibrate to location or other kind of data. That said having a finer tactile interface is always a plus to me (and I'm not blind yet)

This is somewhat similar to swell paper that Ben Krasnow showed in one of his videos recently. The difference is that there the chemical is in the paper, not the ink.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hvudn0skIuI

I think swell paper is physics, not chemistry. The paper expands when heated.

"Touchable Ink, a project in which laser printers are able to print braille-embossed documents. The Touchable Ink, still in its early days, involves a chemical process to adding embossing powder to the laser printing ink. Users just replace their ink cartridge"

So is it ink or is it toner? That reminds me, early HP laser printers did put enough toner on the page that it could be clearly felt, although not as extreme as this.

Touchable Toner sounds kind of dumb, which is why they called it Touchable Ink, I'm guessing.

If it was a laser printer, you'd think the fuser would do the job that they suggest using a hairdryer or microwave for.

This is great for the blind, but is their a broader use for simulated letter press in letterhead or business cards?

I think the degree to which the ink is raised to be legible Braille is greater than what you'd want for simulated letter press. However, finding uses unrelated to disability would make it more viable and affordable.

That might be its most common use. It can be surprising how few blind people actually read braille, it is particularly uncommon amongst those who have developed visual imparements after their youth.

It takes lots of effort to learn to read Braille at a later age, and you may have to do it at a very stressful time ("count on losing your mind for a year or two when you lose your eyesight", I've heard it described by a psychologist familiar with the matter)

Reading Braille also requires sensitive fingers. Cut your finger? Read a lot slower for a few weeks.

Nerve damage in your fingers? You may have to forget about reading Braille. And that's incredibly common among those losing their eyesight, as they predominantly are elderly and/or diabetic (neuropathy is a common side-effect of badly controlled blood sugar levels)

So, let's say you are sixty, diabetic, and losing your eye sight. Are you going to practice for a few hours a day without guarantee of decent results, or are you going to focus on all the other tasks to relearn, and try enjoying, say, the company of your grand children?

Exactly.

I wouldn't be surprised if the availability of technologies like these caused more blind people to learn to read braille. It is of extremely limited use at the moment as you require a text to be already available to you or pay high fees for conversion.

Of course it is also important that it is cheap to do. When you have a significant disability such as loss of sight your income suffers.

"It is of extremely limited use at the moment as you require a text to be already available to you or pay high fees for conversion"

I'm not sure this adds much; for text, there already are mechanical printers that. Yes, they are bulky and noisy, but they do the job. Advenateg of this could be that one can also emboss graphics and, possibly, that the printer and the paper can be a lot cheaper. If the latter is true, we might see printing get more use.

However, for the hard-core reader, I guess a computer, a screen reader (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_reader), and a refreshable braille display (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refreshable_braille_display) will remain the optimal solution for most use cases. They form a very powerful combination for the blind, provided they persevere in mastering it.

I wonder if the next generation of braille will be not just this, but in the smartphone with a taptic engine like that in the iPhone. I can imagine that the engine becomes sensitive enough to deliver minute changes as the user runs their finger across... In any case, it's really cool that things like this exist, because it makes being blind a little bit less bad; instead of a $15,000 printer, you can buy this ink for much cheaper.

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