HoliBraille is a multi-point vibrotactile output system for touchscreen mobile devices. The system outputs Braille characters through direct and localized feedback on the user’s fingers. It consists of six vibrotactile motors attached to springs and a 3D-printed case. The springs mold to users’ hands and dampen vibrations through the device, preventing propagation between fingers and allowing better stimuli discrimination. This technology can be used in several applications such as (1) Braille learning tool, (2) a communication device for deaf-blind people, (3) a feedback system for Braille typing or as (4) a private and secure interaction device.
B# is a correction system for multitouch Braille input that resorts to the chord itself as the basis for similarity analysis between words. This means that even partially correct or invalid chords can be used to retrieve better matches. Even non-alphabetic characters, which are usually ignored by traditional spellcheckers, can provide useful information. We extended the Damerau-Levenshtein distance to assess proximity between chords, and thus use this information to search for the most probable corrections. The system runs on mainstream Android smartphones, where it outperforms Android's spellchecker by providing correct suggestions for 72% of incorrect words (against 38%).
OpenBraille is an Input Method for Android mobile devices that draws inspiration from BrailleTouch‘s usage setup (screen facing away the user), combined with finger recognition/tracking techniques from Perkinput. Currently the method works as any other system-wide 3rd party keyboard and supports grade 1 Braille; however, it can’t be used in combination with TalkBack, due to Android’s technical limitations. As it is, TalkBack needs to be deactivated to use OpenBraille.
UbiBraille is a wearable system where vibrotactile feedback allows blind users to inconspicuously and privately access textual information. Our approach draws inspiration from the traditional Braille writing mechanism where finger chords are used to input 6-dot codes (see Figure). We go one step further by using the Braille code to make sense of vibrotactile information; that is, vibrotactile stimuli are given on the fingers that are used to write a given Braille character.
BrailleType is a text-entry method based on the Braille alphabet. BrailleType avoids multi-touch gestures in favor of a more simple single-finger interaction, featuring few and large targets.