[BRLTTY] Affordable refreshable braille display project

[Jason J.G. White]

On 18/3/24 14:49, Sébastien Hinderer wrote:
> I confess that the document felt too long for me to try to study it so I
> am just passing the link,, with the hope that it wiill be of interest to
> somebody on the list.

This appeared in social media recently as well. Without commenting on 
that particular proposal (or set of proposals), I can say the following.

There have been many braille display cell technology proposals over the 
last several decades, few of which have ever been developed into 
products, and details of which can be found by searching a patent 
database. I've learned to treat new such proposals with scepticism, at 
least until there's a working prototype demonstrated publicly and a 
plausible plan to manufacture a device. Running a patent search online 
will give you a sense of various approaches that have been tried.

In my experience, the low-cost displays tend to have usability 
limitations, so I personally end up buying the more expensive 
piezoelectric technology. There are interesting cell technologies now 
from Dot Inc. and Tactile Engineering that could be genuinely 
transformative, however.

The DotPad display from Dot Inc. appears to be supported by BRLTTY. 
There is also the forthcoming Monarch display from APH and HumanWare - 
not yet supported as far as I can tell from a quick search. The devices 
from Tactile Engineering aren't yet supported as far as I know.

Orbit Research also has multi-line braille displays, presumably using 
their existing cell technology.
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