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I also wondered about a the feasibility of embossing braille on a shape-memory polymer. Imagine a machine that is long and skinny, like a single line of text. It had a roll of paper wrapped around it on an endless loop, and you can scroll this paper back and forth with your finger. On the right side in a braille embosser, so as you scroll with your finger new characters get embossed into the paper, and as it passes underneath the device electrical current is sent to the memory paper with un-embosses the old braille.

MessiahAndrw wrote:I also wondered about a the feasibility of embossing braille on a shape-memory polymer. Imagine a machine that is long and skinny, like a single line of text. It had a roll of paper wrapped around it on an endless loop, and you can scroll this paper back and forth with your finger. On the right side in a braille embosser, so as you scroll with your finger new characters get embossed into the paper, and as it passes underneath the device electrical current is sent to the memory paper with un-embosses the old braille.

That is an interesting idea, however it would be more practical if the device operated like a traditional braille display and refreshed the entire line when a "scroll" button is pressed, rather than moving the paper with your finger. The latter is not a standard braille reading practice and is likely to take a while to get used to while not being very efficient. Its advantages over a traditional braille display, however, is that you can make a 40-cell or an 80-cell or whatever size display just by varying the amount of "paper" (and changing the softwrae) while only requiring one set of embossing pins (6 pins, or 3 if the designers are especially clever). I'm not sure how the price of shape-memory polymers compares to the current price of piezoelectric braille display components (if we ignore market exploitation, which obviously drives the prices up quite a bit further) but if they are significantly cheaper then it's a case of trading refresh rate for price (i.e. a shape-memory polymer will take longer to refresh as it would have to be wound and embossed all the way through the display, but some people might be willing to give up a bit of refresh rate for a cheaper display).

onlyonemac wrote:Never mind I get it. Well no, because I still don't see how your mention of the vibration feature relates to anything, but basically what you're TRYING to say (somehow) is that because phones have vibration functions then it is feasible for them to have a tactile screen. I don't get the logic in that

Vibration functions are implemented with high precision electromechanical solutions. Braille display also requires some electromechanical support. The complexity of the haptic motors is increasing and they still are cheap. A tactile surface with 10*10 electromechanical points can be cheap enough in case if the points are much simpler than the advanced haptic motor from iPhone.

Here you can see the complexity of haptic devices.

Rusky wrote:There is at least one existing product for pressable buttons on touch screen keyboard keys: http://tactustechnology.com/technology/, http://www.getphorm.com/. I don't know how well it would handle braille in its current state- it probably has "button" size and number limitations since it uses a fluid to raise parts of the screen.

It's not clear from the information on the sites what mechanism is used to switch the fluid channels on and off. It's a very important and cost determining part of the solution. May be somebody knows how it works?