Over the past few years, I have been collaborating with Hilary Johnson to develop the next iteration of her Braille-It device. This device is a low-cost manual braille label maker, designed to meet the needs of the 40+ million blind people around the world, most of whom are located in resource-constrained settings. Current solutions are cost-prohibitive, difficult to use, or are limited to just one of 130+ braille languages. She designed and built an Alpha unit that allowed a blind user to intuitively print braille on common Scotch tape, using simple parts and precision mechanisms.
I joined the project to help Hilary bring the device to a second Alpha and Beta prototype. We developed more intuitive mechanisms for use, solving some of the drawbacks of her previous designs around tape cutting, manual indexing, and assembly. We also optimized the unit for manufacturing, designing it for injection molding with minimal part count. Currently, we are continuing to iterate and optimize the design with the goal of developing tooling for an Engineering Validation Test.
The new design resulted in a patent: US20200312188A1
