Refreshable Braille display

A refreshable Braille display is an electro-mechanical device for displaying Braille characters, usually by means of raising dots through holes in a flat surface. The display is used to present text to computer users who are blind and cannot use a normal computer monitor. Speech synthesizers are also commonly used for the same task, and a blind user may switch between the two systems depending on circumstances.

Because of the complexity of producing a reliable display that will cope with daily wear and tear, these displays are expensive. Usually, only 40 or 80 Braille cells are displayed. On some models the position of the cursor is represented by vibrating the dots, and some models have a switch associated with each cell to move the cursor to that cell directly. Refreshable braille displays sit under a regular computer keyboard, and smaller displays (usually 18–40 cells) are available on some models of notetakers.

A new development, called the rotating-wheel Braille display, was developed in 2000 by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and is still in the process of commercialization. Braille dots are put on the edge of a spinning wheel, and allows the blind user to read continuously with a stationary finger while the wheel spins at a selected speed. The Braille dots are set in a simple scanning-style fashion as the dots on the wheel spins past a stationary actuator that sets the Braille characters. As a result, manufacturing complexity is greatly reduced and rotating-wheel Braille displays will be much more inexpensive than traditional Braille displays.

External link

• NIST Braille Display Project