The Dot Pad is the winner of a Best of Innovation award in the Accessibility category, at the 2023 Computer Electronics Show (CES)(1), in Las Vegas, California, on Jan. 5-8. The Dot Pad is the world’s first tactile graphics tablet, enabling access to visually-generated graphics, such as maps, charts and illustrations, for the visually impaired and the blind. Using patented dot actuator technology, together with patented braille translation software, on a patented split screen output device, that is seamlessly integrated via Bluetooth connection to VoiceOver-enabled iOS mobile devices, the Dot Pad finally offers real-time interaction with graphics content from the web, for the blind and visually impaired. Real time interaction provided via 300-cell (2400-pin) interactive tactile access to graphics, charts, illustrations, and maps, as well as 20-cell (160-pin) refreshable text-to-Braille display. The Dot Pad is a tablet designed with accessibility to graphics in mind for a community of 285 million blind people.
Masterminded by the Korean company Dot Incorporation, the Dot Pad is the latest product of a whole line of smart electronic devices, designed to create a barrier-free world for the blind. A world where only 3% of printed materials are translated to Braille, creating a huge literacy gap. A world where it is impossible to use an ATM, or a glucose monitor, that is not Braille-enabled. Likewise, a world inaccessible for buying public transportation tickets, finding your way using public transportation maps, texting or using email, surfing the web, googling, and many more tasks that are completely taken for granted by sighted people. Tasks that are impossible to perform without some form of assistive VoiceOver technology, designed to provide audio instead of visual input, or to enable tactile access with Braille.
Braille is a tactile language that enables the visually impaired and blind to read and write. It was developed in 1824, by Louis Braille, a fifteen-year-old French youth, who lost his eyesight in a childhood accident. The Braille system consists of a tactile code for letters and punctuation, as well as for word contractions. A tactile code that is traditionally embossed on thick paper stock. The code consists of Braille cells, comprising varying combinations of 3x2 raised dots.
For Braille text and graphics to become refreshable on a computer screen, the technology involves generating tactile relief. In a nutshell, the Dot Pad comprises a perforated glass grid screen, allowing 2400 pins to come through as raised or lowered tactile relief. Tactile relief corresponding to an output both in Braille text and raised-dot graphics. The constantly pin-actuated (or refreshed) glass surface is driven by AI algorithms, using any input (print, graphics, images or audio), for translation to Braille and dot graphics. Input-processing mediated via Bluetooth connection to the web, running on another VoiceOver-enabled, iOS mobile device. The dot graphics are further manipulable, for example with pan, zoom, rotate and invert functions.
Thus, the Dot Pad brings together many different patented inventions, not the least of which is the small, lightweight and compact format of the pin-actuated device. The following is a list of some of the corresponding US utility patents, awarded for various output aspects of the Dot Pad.
- US11508259 - Information output apparatus.
- US11322003 - Information output device.
- US11263935 - Electronic display device and information display method of same.
- US10996916 - Data output apparatus and method, and computer-readable recording medium.
- US10971041 - Electronic display device and information display method of same.
- US10679532 - Electronic display device and information display method of same.
- US10649714 - Data output apparatus and method, and computer-readable recording medium.
- US10217389 - Electronic display device and information display method of same.
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Note
(1) The Las Vegas Computer Electronic Show (CES) is one of the largest tradeshows in the world. Traditionally, since 1967, CES has unveiled some of the most game-changing technologies, such as VCRs, CDs, DVDs and digital radio. 2023 is "back-to-normal" attendance, after two consecutive years of hosting a virtual event.
CES 2023
https://www.ces.tech/
Dot Incorporation
https://www.dotincorp.com/
Dot pad – Info
https://pad.dotincorp.com/
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