Tactile Video Displays

The National Insti­tute of Stan­dards and Tech­nol­ogy has licensed a tech­nol­ogy for the com­mer­cial­iza­tion of a tac­tile graphic dis­play device. The device promises users who are blind the abil­ity to feel images from any num­ber of sources on a refre­sh­able braille dis­play. The tech­nol­ogy has been in devel­op­ment for awhile, but com­mer­cial­iza­tion is a sig­nif­i­cant step forward.

From the press release:

ELIA Life Tech­nol­ogy Inc. of New York, N.Y., licensed for com­mer­cial­iza­tion both the tac­tile graphic dis­play device and fin­ger­tip graphic reader devel­oped by NIST researchers. The for­mer, first intro­duced as a pro­to­type in 2002, allows a per­son to feel a suc­ces­sion of images on a reusable sur­face by rais­ing some 3,600 small pins (actu­a­tor points) into a pat­tern that can be locked in place, read by touch and then reset to dis­play the next graphic in line. Each image—from scanned illus­tra­tions, Web pages, elec­tronic books or other sources—is sent elec­tron­i­cally to the reader where spe­cial soft­ware deter­mines how to cre­ate a match­ing tac­tile display.

From the ELIA Life Tech­nol­ogy About Us page:

The ELIA Life team strives to improve the qual­ity of life of visu­ally impaired per­sons and their fam­ily mem­bers by enabling the visu­ally impaired to live, work, learn, and com­mu­ni­cate with greater inde­pen­dence and dignity.

It appears that they mar­ket the tac­tile alpha­bet as an alter­na­tive to braille and claim that, “only three per­cent of legally blind Amer­i­cans can read Braille”

I don’t know how long before this tech­nol­ogy will be made widely avail­able, but it raises a cou­ple of inter­est­ing questions:

1. Would you pre­fer effec­tive alt text to a tac­tile graphic dis­play device that worked?
2. Will this type of tech­nol­ogy one day be used as an excuse for peo­ple not do use alt tags?

More on the tech­nol­ogy: NIST ‘Pins’ Down Imag­ing Sys­tem for the Blind

(via Web­bAlert)