K.U.Leuven > ESAT > PSI > Visics > Research > Topics > Item 4.6

Development of a portable and intelligent Braille display

L. Van Gool, E. Pauwels, J. Willekens

The aim of this project is to draw on current state-of-the-art technology in hard- and software to create a computer interface for blind people that is both expressive and intelligent. By expressive we mean that it should be able to offer capabilities similar to that of a window-oriented graphical user interface, i.e., information can be represented and accessed in a non-linear and non-sequential fashion. By intelligent we mean that the interface is capable of using the meta-information embedded in the structured hypertext documents (such as html-files) to generate a document layout that is specifically adapted to the special needs of the visually handicapped user. To this end we collaborate within the context of the IWT-project STWW 98-0387 with partners SENSOTEC and Profs K. Hameyer (ESAT-ELEN) and J. Engelen (ESAT-TEO) to realize the following two goals.

Design and implementation of a mouse equipped with tactile display. The tactile display consists of a small number of Braille-cells that are refreshed in response to the movement of the mouse. The blind reader operates this mouse positioning his hand in such a way that his reading finger rests on the tactile display. Since at any one moment the blind reader will only explore the characters under his reading finger (i.e., the characters on the tactile display), he gets the impression that he is roaming over a large Braille display. Put differently, we propose to use a mouse equipped with a tactile display to create a large virtual Braille display.

Design of a software interface for the manipulation of mathematical formulae. The sophisticated visual appearance of computer and Internet documents (hypertext) is created by the extensive use of structured document preparation languages. These languages allow the reader to specify within the same document, both content (i.e. the message one wants to convey to the reader) and format (i.e. the way this message will look when displayed). This formatting information is embedded in the main text as meta-data, to be decoded and executed by specialized software-modules. This meta-information can be used to automatically restructure documents to render them more accessible to people with special needs. To prove this point we are developing an intelligent interface that will assist visually handicapped people in studying mathematical textbooks. More precisely, it will allow them not only to read mathematical formulae with relative ease, but also to manipulate them in a way similar to what sighted people would do. We have chosen to focus our efforts on mathematics, as it is a subject that abounds with complicated graphical material and challengingly structured formulae, and is therefore an ideal test bed for our ideas.