I've been exploring, learning, and figuring out Dot Pad over the past week and I have been having a lot of: "Wow!", "So cool!", and "that's amazing!" Feeling expressions.
Similar to most Braille displays, it was quick and easy to pair in VoiceOver Braille settings, and I was able to instantly have tactile graphics of app icons, controls, and images. There are light-grey pins that raise and dark-pins that are lowered to provide the layout and structure.
Along the lines of being Braille literate, there is a gap of being tactile graphic-literate. I was surprised to having difficulty making sense and figuring out what the tactile graphics represent because of having visual memory from being sighted until the age of 14 and learning and using tactile graphics in education.
I've been able to have sighted people (via in real life or remote video) walkthrough and describe the parts with context and details for me to understand the whole. This seems as transformative as from CLI > GUI or the touch screen being accessible. Blind people have access to visual assets, such as wireframes and screenshots, specifically the layout and structure is a tactile graphic that doesn't require making a mental picture, but adding context/details to the tactile graphics under ones finger.
It's been very fun, cool, and amazing to browse through either photos I have or ones out on the web to see what different things feel like (meaningful connection). The act of even wanting to see what visual things look like is a new thing because of now having a way to view it in an accessible way.
This has opened up a new spatial layout and structure world that has a learning curve, but I'm curious, excited, and happy to go along the tactile graphics journey with Dot Pad!
Comments
I'm not a huge fan of braille displays but...
This sounds cool!
how many lines of braille cells
I heard about it few months ago.
and want to know that how many line and cells in this braille device?
1 line with 20 cells at bottom under 6-button controls
There are 3 sections the tactile graphics is the main 2/3, where the bottom 1/3 is share between 6 navigation and interaction controls, and 1-line of 20-cells for Braille text.
Input and height
Input: The 6 buttons are: left arrow, pan left, home, activate, pan right, right arrow. No other input keys.
Height: It's either raised or lowered, no variable height.
does it have a braille keyboard?
the subject said it all.
does it has braille keyboard?
and how many device it can be connect at once?
Meh!
This is interesting, but I was hoping it would also allow for multi-line Braille, so I can do things like read entire pages at a time or accurately feel tables of information. If this is mostly tactile graphics, I'll have to pass. I've never had vision, so trying to represent 3D concepts with a 2D diagram makes absolutely no sense and never will. I hated tactile diagrams in school and got through that mess somehow. It feels like a bunch of weird lines and shapes as far as my brain is concerned.
~1 year later.....
It doesn't seam to be availible.
I've looked on their website and can't find a price.
i'd not mind a multy cell braille display but what I'd love is the ability to actually tap on links/combo boxes. Imagine this; you open youtube, feel around, find search, tap on it, type in your search and press enter.
A list of headings for search results comes up and you're able to tap on one to open it. It would give you an actual layout of the website.
The issue would be that it could take a long time to scroll through links. Perhaps this wouldn't work after all.
Missed this one
Guess I didn't pay attention to this thread over the last year, but this sounds like a useful device for looking at screen things. I remember back in the ancient days, there was the Optacon. And for a while, back in college, I rigged up a dot metrics printer to jab the paper hard enough to leave scratches. Eventually, the pins failed, but I got a good look at different letter fonts and some simple pictures.
Doubt I could fit something like this into my budget though.
pillowmax?
they had this non impact braille printer using solid ink. using laser printing technology, it could print out fairly detailed graphic. do they still make it? i think it's called pillowmax or something. it wasn't very popular because it was marketed as a braille printer. using it to produce brail is simply too expensive, and the dots can fall off with repeated touch. if they had marketed it as a graphic printer, they product might have a chance.
Refreshable Tactiles
There's been a number of tactile technologies over the last several decades, but not usually in a mainstream cost range... I remember that puff-up paper you could run through a copy machine back in the late 80s. You had to have a copy machine though. A refreshable, raised-graphics screen, larger and much quieter than a fingertip on the Optacon, was the holy grail. Now I'm told you can just 3D print a holy grail, but I don't think it would do what this thing will.