Blind Second Life User Creates Braille-To-Voice Chat Reader

In real life, Louise Later is legally blind, so when she joined Second Life, she bought an artificial dog, which the developer immediately remade into her seeing eye dog, reprogramming "Max" so that he would follow her around.  Not satisfied with that bit of clever programming, Ms. Later came up a technology that seems revolutionary on many levels.  KJ Hax of the SL Education Blog reports what happened next:

This [cube] object, when clicked, actually reads braille-encoded objects in Second Life using the in-world voice chat.

Staggering.  I can't wait to get a first-hand demo.  Image: www.sl-educationblog.org.

Comments

[Kate Amdahl]

I'm sorry, I'm missing something...since Braille is only useful as something you can touch - after all, reading Braille by looking at it doesn't offer any advantage over reader the Roman alphabet by looking at it - what use would Braille have in Second Life, and why would there need to be a reader for it? Who would "write" Braille in Second Life and why? I'm sure I'm just not making some important connection, but so far the significance of this is lost on me...

^^^\ Kate /^^^

[cyn vandeverre]

I have a blind friend; she doesn't use Braille much, but instead types on a keyboard and her computer reads text to her. Is there something about SL's object text descriptions which make them not useful in this way?

[Hamlet Au]

I'll know more when I get a demo, but this looks like a powerful application to help other Residents who are sight impaired. Beyond that, I could see this technology applied to an augmented reality device that can read Braille tags on buildings, street signs, etc. In either case, it's definitely fricking cool.

[rikomatic]

There are braille display devices that can display text in braille readable / feelable format: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refreshable_Braille_display . These are commonly used for sight-impaired people to use their computers.

[decka Mah (SL)]

@ Cyn Vanderverre
Contact Louise Later in SL as she is a certified visual describer and has a way to add these descriptions to SL objects and Max the guide dog can sense them and her reader says them. Her sister is blind and she only has keyhole vision in one eye. The dog is free.

[Louise Later]

Let me help out by clarifying some of the issues raised.

Issue 1. Rikomatic's post is right!
The Braille cube shown was a "placeholder" for the real Braille technology that is being developed by Tom32 Anatine in-world so that people who are blind can read the Second Life textchat using a raised-pin refreshable Braille display.

See this link for an image of a Braille display: http://www.braillenet.org/accessibilite/livreblanc/images/braille3.jpg

Tom32 Anatine has developed an application that will pipe the SL textchat to a device that some blind computer users have--a raised-pin refreshable Braille display. The SL chat is sent to the device so that the pins change to correspond to the words in chat. The user reads the pins and then responds via the user's normal computer keyboard.

With Tom's application, the user could read the textchat on the Braille display and respond via the user's regular computer keyboard.

Typical Types of Braille Displays for Personal Computers:
The list given here might be incomplete, but these displays are actually supported by the freely available LibBraille which can be used as a library to use Braille hardware to display any string or sort of sign on a Braille display.
Types:
- ALVA
- BAUM
- HANDYTECH
- TECHNIBRAILLE
- VOYAGER
- PAPENMEIER

Now, Tom32 Anatine is looking for users of Braille raised-pins refreshable displays to volunteer to be beta testers of his application.

Do you know anyone who is using one and would like to be part of making SL more accessible?

Please contact Tom32 Anatine if you know of someone who is intersted in being a beta tester for this application.

Issue 2
We ALSO have an application that voices the text chat (EVA by Jarek Dejavu).

So why bother with the Braille display? Just as the normal SL user has two ways to get information from SL text--hearing it read by voice or reading it silently, the blind user would have two ways to access the text chat--read text silently with the Braille display OR hear it voiced aloud.

Issue 3
Braille signs
Developers who are part of the Virtual Guidedog project have also developed two simple devices that create signs in Braille to be displayed inworld.

Chade Villota (multiple lines)
Tom32 Anatine (10 characters)

Why have Brailled signs?
These "bi-lingual" signs would have the text in Braille and in regular letters so that particular places and objects "of interest" can be labeled so that users of SL, whether sighted or not, can find out more about these items and places.

Depending on the owners' preference, clicking on these labels sometimes triggers wav files with Audio Description of what is around. The signs also can print a text description of the item of interest.