“AFI” (Ability For Inclusion)”
HackTheBook: Redefining the concept of the book
Braille is known to enable people with visual impairments to read text by replacing visual information with tactile feedback. Touch takes the place of vision as the reader's finger scans rows of embossed symbols that encode letters, numbers, and symbols of the written word. The restoration of the meaning of the text in the reader's mind is directly related to the tactile data provided by the embossed printed symbols and the speed at which the reader's finger scans the text.
The proposed project focuses on this specific relationship between touch and information by providing the user with the experience of haptic reading of a Braille text. The decoding of the writing is achieved through sound, partly due to its haptic dimension and also because it does not exclude visually impaired individuals from using the application. Specifically, as the user scans a Braille text relief with their finger, the system vocalizes the text corresponding to the touch point at a rate proportional to the speed of scanning the relief. The user's finger thus becomes a 'reading head' for an audio recording mediated by the Braille embossed text.
The implementation of the application requires transforming the user's finger into a kind of mouse through the use of membrane potentiometers located underneath the 3D printed lines of Braille text. The position and velocity information obtained in this way will be mapped to the position and velocity of a digital audio file containing the corresponding sentence of the text.
Ex-Des Team (Experience Designers): Dimitris Agathopoulos-Maria Kozari Mela-Stavros Michalopoulos
Related links
https://www.onassis.org/whats-on/hackthebook-redefining-concept-book
