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| Image: Courtesy of Team Tactile |
With just a few hours left to build a
groundbreaking gadget, things weren't going as smoothly as planned.
Six young women, all undergrad engineering
students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, had established a lofty goal: to create the first-ever
affordable device that immediately translates printed text into Braille. The
idea could prove revolutionary for the blind community, transforming how they
read while also creating sorely needed opportunities for children with low or
no vision.
But throughout the hectic, 15-hour MakeMIT hackathon last
February, the women — competing as Team 100% Enthusiasm — were running into
snags. The lines for hackathon participants to use the 3D printers were taking
forever. The team laser-cut the wrong material for the casing. And the optical
recognition software they wanted to use — crucial for the device to actually
work — wasn't turning up accurate translations of text.
"It turned out to be a lot harder than we
thought," says Charlene Xia, one of the team members.
With only 15 minutes left on the clock, they
finally had a working prototype — albeit a crude one. The device was big and
hastily taped together in places, with wires poking out and only a few pins for
Braille characters.
"It was janky," Xia says, laughing.
"But it worked."
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An
early Tactile prototype. Image: Courtesy of Team Tactile
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It did indeed work, enough so to take first place
in the hackathon. The device, dubbed Tactile, had been born.
A year later, Team 100% Enthusiasm has been
renamed Team Tactile. The women are already making waves with their invention,
both in terms of accessibility and advancing the visibility of women in tech.
But with a ways to go before Tactile hits the
market, and big plans for the future, they're really just getting started.
A collective goal to (affordably)
change the world
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Image:
Courtesy of Team Tactile
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Right before the hackathon, the young women were
sitting in Xia's bedroom, deciding what to build. Their ideas ranged from a
dancing robot so people wouldn't be lonely at clubs to an alarm clock that
would wake you up by splashing water in your face.
They quickly realized, however, that they really
wanted to create something that could change the world for the better.
One teammate brought up a concept design she'd
seen of a Braille watch. They toyed with the idea of building a text-to-Braille converter,
but figured something like that had to already exist. So they did what any of
us would do — they Googled it.
"There were a few things, like refreshable
Braille technology, that cost like US$3,000. And we were like, 'Holy crap. Why is
this so expensive?'" Xia says.
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Images
of the MakeMIT hackathon prototype. Image: Courtesy of Team Tactile
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According to the American Foundation for the Blind, refreshable Braille displays, which typically
help blind users read information from a computer screen, cost between US$3,500
and US$15,000 depending on the number of characters they have. Portable devices
on the market, like the Android-based B2G, still cost around US$2,500. The technology is expensive, and just two
companies essentially have a duopoly on the tech. The devices
are typically sold by the Braille dot (one character has six dots), and they
can go for US$30 or more per dot.
But Tactile, proposed to be the size of a candy
bar with 36 characters (216 dots), could cost as little as US$100.
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A
rendering of the future Tactile prototype. Image: Courtesy of Team Tactile
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Here's how it works: You slide the device over
printed text, like a book, menu, or even a packaging label. The camera captures
images of the words and sends them to a microcontroller, which then performs
text recognition. That information, via an electromagnetic activation
mechanism, moves the pins up and down at the top of the device, translating the
text into Braille. Like with other displays, the Braille characters physically
refresh as they scroll through sections of text.
"We're using cheaper material and an easier
manufacturing method," says Xia, and this drives down prices.
US$100 is just an estimate. But even if they land
at US$200, Team Tactile still thinks it will be a success.
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Paul
Parravano, co-director of MIT's Government and Community Relations office,
gives Team Tactile feedback from a blind person's perspective. Image: Courtesy
of Team Tactile
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The tech effect on Braille
Approximately 1.3 million Americans are legally blind, though millions more live with a
visual disability. At the end of 2015, an estimated 61,739 students were
reported as legally blind. Globally,
39 million people are blind and 246 million have low vision.
But if you think about how much the iPhone has
evolved over just the past decade, the stagnant Braille display
market looks archaic in comparison.
Since the blind community is a relatively small
percentage of the overall population, there's a perceived lack of demand for
improved Braille technology. There's not a huge incentive for companies to
develop better tech for the blind.
As a result, Braille displays are more or less
the same as they were 30 years ago.
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Charlene
Xia, of Team Tactile, works on the technology behind the device. Image:
Courtesy of Team Tactile
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In the advent of new technologies like VoiceOver
and other text-to-speech software, Braille literacy rates are declining. Only an estimated 10 percent of children learn Braille today,
because it's often seen as too difficult, time-consuming or outdated to teach.
But advocates argue Braille is just as important as ever, especially when it
comes to employment.
Up to 70 percent of blind people are unemployed,
according to widely cited statistics, due to discrimination,
misconceptions, distance barriers and other factors. But 80% of blind people who are employed have something in common: They can all
read Braille. It helps them learn things like grammar and punctuation, and how
to read charts and graphs — all difficult, if not impossible, to learn using
text-to-speech.
"One of the biggest things we learned is
that most visually impaired families fall below the average income class,"
Xia says. "They don't have the proper education ... because they can't
afford the tools to get the information they need to get higher-income
jobs."
It's a vicious cycle, Xia says, and one Team
Tactile hopes to break.
"We really hope this technology will offset
the market and just open up some competition, and drive the price down as much
as we can," she says.
Unexpected role models
Regardless of how it was conceived and produced,
Tactile is an invention that can open doors for the blind community.
Nevertheless, it's noteworthy that it was six
young women in their early 20s who created such a life-changing device. The
number of women in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields is
still lackluster, thanks to stereotypes, bias and an often unwelcoming climate
at universities.
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Team
Tactile (L-R): Chandani Doshi, Jialin Shi, Bonnie Wang, Charlene Xia, Tania Yu
and Grace Li. Image: Courtesy of Team Tactile
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To wit: In 2013, only 18% of people who graduated with a computer
science degree in the U.S. were women. Professionally, women make up only 29% of the science and engineering workforce. A recent study found that gender stereotypes around STEM
can affect girls as young as age six.
But gender doesn't change anything for Team
Tactile. "Our team isn't really thinking, 'Oh, we're women,' working
differently in any way," says team member Tania Yu. "This is what we
enjoy, this is what we want to do, so we just went for it."
And that's Team Tactile's message for young
girls: If you're interested in science and engineering, don't be afraid to go
for it.
"They can see us and be like, 'They can do
it; we can do it, too.' And they don't have to feel like it's only men doing
this," Yu says.
Xia sees a lot of Facebook posts and videos of
new inventions, and the inventors always seem to be men. She admits it can be
subconscious for younger girls. If you only see men doing it, you might start
to believe women can't.
"We're happy that when we have a Facebook
post up about our project, maybe girls are watching it ... and maybe they'll
consider applying to STEM fields and try it out," Xia says.
The future is Tactile
After last February's hackathon, Team Tactile was
accepted into Microsoft's #MakeWhatsNext patent programme, which provides legal help
to women inventors throughout the complex process of getting a patent. They
applied last September, and Tactile received "patent pending" status
that same week.
In the meantime, they're working on different
iterations of the prototype, aiming to meet the accepted standards for
refreshable Braille displays in terms of size and durability.
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The current
Tactile prototype. Image: Courtesy of Team Tactile
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The last step is creating an accompanying app, so
people can connect Tactile to their smartphones and use the device beyond
printed text.
"We plan for this semester — our last
semester — to be a sprint toward our goal," Xia says. "A couple of
people on our team have already decided to work on this after graduation. But,
ideally, by the end of this semester — June of this year — we will have our
first ideal prototype."
And Team Tactile won't stop there. The long-term
goal is to see this brought to production. Ultimately, they want any blind or
low-vision child to be able to use to the device for all purposes, from school
to everyday life.
"We want this to open up information access to the entire visually impaired community," Yu says. "We can really help remove some of the various barriers they face."
Originally published on Mashable
