by Penny Reeder
My friend, Melanie, says she used an Optacon to get through law school. "I used to take it to the library, and even when I couldn't find a live reader, I could use the Optacon to get research done," she says.
A systems administrator has told me about the middle-of-the- night crises she used to be called upon to solve. "The phone would ring at 3 a.m., and the person on the other end of the line would tell me that the system had just crashed. The only way I could rescue the system," she says, "was to get out my Optacon and begin searching through those reams of computer print-outs to locate the programming error that had caused the system to crash. Without the Optacon, I could not have done my job."
Another friend buys used Optacons, just so she'll have spare parts available for the inevitable day when hers fails. She still finds it the most efficient device in her house for sorting through the envelopes that come in the mail.
I know a blind man who believes the Optacon is the single most important technological innovation for people who are blind to have occurred within the last hundred years, more important than the development of screen readers, more important than the Internet.
Screen readers, braille displays, OCR reading systems, and combinations of all these approaches to making printed materials accessible to people who are blind and visually impaired have replaced the original Optacons, but many people still look back upon the original devices with a certain degree of nostalgia, and some personal speculations: What if the Optacon hadn't fallen on hard times; what if the machines had gotten easier instead of harder to use; what if prices had gone down?...
What if there were to be a new Optacon? A better Optacon? One that could combine the advantages of electronic tactile displays, refreshable braille, text to speech and speech to text, one that used off-the-shelf components to keep prices down and encourage replacement of components with better cheaper ones as they become available, one that used digital technologies? Are these idle speculations, or is such a device around the proverbial corner? Improved Optacon on the Near Horizon?
According to Oleg Tretiakoff, who developed the first piezo-electric braille display in 1975, a new, improved Optacon is on the near horizon. As a matter of fact, the inventor, who began working with Dean Blazie to develop the tactile display for such a device in late 1999 under a research grant which was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), says that the new Optacon may, in fact, evolve into two machines, one for people who prefer to read by touch, and another for blind people who cannot access or process information tactually.
Tretiakoff explains, "During the last 30 years, we have witnessed changes in electronic circuits technology and consequently computer hardware and software which have rendered the technology used in the original Optacon all but obsolete, while the functions it provided have remained as necessary and important as they were 30 years ago. In addition, researchers throughout the world have learned much about the way people process information tactually. Our goal is to develop new print reading machines around the best available electronic circuits technology and software available today, and to apply what researchers have learned about the ways people interface best with tactile displays so that whatever we design will be easier to learn to use and easier to use than the original Optacon reading machine." A Multi-Modal Reading Machine
Tretiakoff, whose company, C.A.Technology, Inc., has been developing the new device with the remnants of the original grant which the NSF awarded to Blazie Engineering before the company was sold to Freedom Scientific (which chose not to continue the research), says that the new iteration of the Optacon will dispense more than just the tactile impressions of letters and symbols which its predecessor provided.
"People have had more than a century of experience reading embossed braille produced on paper, and about 20 years of practice with refreshable braille displays," he explains. "And we know that braille is the preferred way for blind people to read."
"There are some symbols and graphics that just can't be converted into braille," he continues, "and our new display would simply utilize the information which a very accurate digital camera can convey to convert symbols like those into a tactually accessible display. Therefore, the new machine's tactile graphic array will actually display combinations of two types of information: braille and tactual representations of symbols and graphics."
"The new machine will use a megapixel digital color camera to acquire an image of any document, book page or printed object in a single shot," he continues. With the new device, one will no longer have to put a large volume through a series of contortions or risk breaking the book's spine in order to scan in images of its pages for a reading system.
Nor will the machine be confined to interfacing only with printed sheets of paper. Tretiakoff explains, "The goal of the new machine is to allow blind people to read what is written, not necessarily just printed materials on paper, but written information wherever it appears. The display which we are working on will be very thin -- probably no thicker than a third of an inch."
He is investigating a number of possible alternatives for the machine's actuator device, but he is convinced that, no matter what alternative he settles upon, the new reading machine will generate its tactile array in a completely new way. Therefore, one can imagine the number of convenient applications that such a display mechanism might afford. The display could become part of another device, in fact, like a personal data assistant or a cell phone, or it could be the display component on a computer system.
Tretiakoff understands that braille is not everyone's cup of tea. Some people came to blindness late in life and have not had the patience or the inclination to learn to read braille or to develop their tactile sensibilities; others have additional disabilities, like certain neuropathies, which make tactile discrimination virtually impossible. Therefore, Tretiakoff plans to make a version of the new machine which will utilize the advanced optical character recognition features of a digital camera to provide information in spoken formats. "We do not intend to reinvent the OCR process, but we will carefully select the best available OCR and synthetic speech software," he explains. Such a device might cost as little as $1,500, he told me.
Tretiakoff says that the new machines will be easy to learn to use. "They should be very easy to operate without any specialized training, both by blind people proficient in braille reading and by those who are unable to read by touch," he said.
When C.A. Technology took over the project, there was only 20 percent of the original grant funding left. Two years later, the money is running out, and Tretiakoff has submitted grant proposals to the National Science Foundation to continue product development. "I have done the preliminary research which shows what should be done," he explains. "But there is still much work to do."
His grant proposals were submitted on May 2, and the period for submitting proposals will conclude in June. His goals are twofold: First, to bring the cost of a new Optacon down, and second, to bring down the thickness of any tactile display array. He believes that he can make the display thin enough to interface easily with a multitude of other electronic devices, and that the new machine may cost as little as half that of the original Optacon. Meanwhile in Wuppertal, Germany Blind people are already using something called "TIM" to convert printed symbols and pictures into tactual displays."TIM" stands for Tactile Interactive Monitor, and according to its inventor, Gunnar Matschulat, there are already several people using his invention at their worksites, and by the end of 2002, the company hopes to have between 15 and 20 people actively testing the device.
Video-TIM converts a visual image into piezo-electric "dots" to display the image and make it tactually accessible to people who cannot access it visually. TIM employs digital technology which can "decide" which particular pixels of a graphic should be displayed, and which ones should not -- thereby producing an image which is free enough of "clutter" to be understood tactually.
The TIM stand-alone machine provides only a tactile display, which is similar, though not identical, to that of the original Optacon. According to Matschulat, "The Video-TIM is built to show a live video-picture of original graphics, and letters just like the original Optacon. There is a PC-TIM, which, via its connection with a computer, is able to display braille as well. But the PC-TIM is not a finished product yet. We have to simplify its usage."
According to the machine's inventor, it takes only about a day for a blind person to learn to use the TIM device, although their reading speed is "very slow for sure."
Former users of the Optacon have told me about having to learn to recognize and decode the printed alphabet before even beginning to learn to use the Optacon, so I think this reported learning curve of one day is remarkable to say the least.
I have enjoyed corresponding with both these inventors. Matschulat has the kind of sardonic wit that I appreciate. When I asked him how much the Video-TIM might cost in U.S. dollars, he told me he is unable to provide an estimate right now. The company is struggling and working under the constraints of a very low budget, but Matschulat is not discouraged.
"As you know," he said, "there is a law of nature that successful people are required to start in a garage."
Who knows, perhaps both these inventors will turn out to be the next Steve Jobs and Bill Gates of the assistive-technology community!
To learn more about the Video-TIM, visit the company's web site at www.abtim.com. To learn more about the new Optacon, visit www.catechnology.net or e-mail the machine's inventor at [email protected].