Aiding the Visually Impaired: Developing an efficient Braille Printer

TL;DR

This paper presents two prototypes of a cost-effective and improved Braille printer designed to enhance accessibility for the visually impaired, addressing high costs and technical limitations of commercial options.

Contribution

The authors developed and demonstrated two Braille printer prototypes focusing on affordability and technical improvements over existing commercial devices.

Findings

First prototype is significantly cheaper than commercial printers.

Both prototypes successfully produce Braille output.

The second prototype addresses and eliminates several limitations of current Braille printers.

Abstract

With the large number of partially or completely visually impaired persons in society, their integration as productive, educated and capable members of society is hampered heavily by a pervasively high level of braille illiteracy. This problem is further compounded by the fact that braille printers are prohibitively expensive - generally starting from two thousand US dollars, beyond the reach of the common man. Over the period of a year, the authors have tried to develop a Braille printer which attempts to overcome the problems inherent in commercial printers. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to introduce two prototypes - the first with an emphasis of cost-effectiveness, and the second prototype, which is more experimental and aims to eliminate several demerits of Braille printing. The first prototype has been constructed at a cost significantly less than the existing commercial braille printers. Both the prototypes of the device have been constructed, which will be shown.