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Voice Stick: The end of Braille? 21 Aug 2008
Everyone knows that Braille is the standard means of making reading material accessible to blind folk. What most people don't know, however, is that translating text into Braille is an extremely costly and time-consuming pursuit - which explains why there are so few Braille books on the shelves of our book stores and libraries.
Recognition of these impracticalities prompted Sungwoo Park to develop Voice Stick. Voice Stick is an advanced optical character recognition (OCR) scanner that is designed to make all books available to the visually impaired. The concept is simple: As you swipe the wand down the length of a printed page, the text beneath your fingers is translated and read aloud to you in a cheerful voice. A beautiful idea (and yet another one to file under "Why didn't I think of that?").
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8 comments so far
JJ 21 Aug 2008 01:51 PM
Nope, Voice Stick isn't the end of Braille. Voice Stick looks like it will be great for reading books, magazines, leaflets and so on. But Braille will continue to be useful for things like signs.
damisa 21 Aug 2008 03:41 PM
When print becomes "antiquated" for sighted people so shall be braille for individuals who are blind. Even insinuating the end of braille is ridiculous.
Jacko 21 Aug 2008 04:02 PM
People who are both deaf and blind (who can't hear the audio output by a device like Voice Stick) will still need braille. But I am struggling to think of reasons why blind people would need braile if they had something like VS. I don't buy into JJ's braille-for-signs argument, cos I don't believe that blind people use braille signs in reality (How do they find them? Surely they just ask a sighted person for directions instead?)
Chris K 21 Aug 2008 05:51 PM
Some countries use braille on banknotes to signify denomination I think - which seems like a great use to me :)
nick 21 Aug 2008 06:55 PM
its a nice concept but in reality ocr isn't good enough to make it work as well as is needed. the numerous scanning errors would make listening to the text a bit like playing a game of chinese whispers.
damisa 22 Aug 2008 03:52 PM
@Jacko -- why do you need print? To read? That is why braille is still necessary and will always be necessary. Listening is not reading. Would you deny your own child, sighted or blind, the joy of reading? writing? I think not.
Jacko 23 Aug 2008 03:54 PM
@damisa: Forgive me, but you're letting political-correctness "blind" you (If you'll forgive the pun). Your comment suggests that you see "braille reading" as the direct equivalent of "sighted reading". It isn't. Sighted reading involves use of the eyes, wheareas braille reading involves use of touch. Two very different senses. As such, you can't dismiss Voice Stick by arguing that "listening isn't reading" because - by your logic - touching (i.e. braille) isn't reading either.
damisa 27 Aug 2008 09:25 PM
@Jacko -- You actually missed my point. The point was that similar cognitive process take place when reading, either by touch or by sight. Listening is a very different cognitive process. One does not have to decode, utilize phonemic awareness and phonology, etc when one is listening. One must do all of these things when reading, either through touch or by sight. Unfortunately, you oversimplified my simplistic response. For not going more in-depth, I apologize. I will not, however, equate listening with reading. Both may be used to gather information, but they are not the same. So, as I stated before, when sighted people stop reading print or determine it to be unnecessary, then so shall be braille.