SBIR Phase II: Microfluidic Technology for Full-Page Digital Braille and Tactile Graphics Display

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is to reduce the burden of accessing information for the 1.5 million blind people in the United States by making a full page of refreshable braille text and tactile graphics available in a device resembling a tablet computer. This assistive technology will provide increased access to braille in digital form and enable blind students to read, with their fingers, digitized spatial content including mathematical equations, graphs, and figures, creating parity with their sighted counterparts interested in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields.

In particular, the product with supporting software will remove barriers to collaboration in classroom learning environments and document preparation in the workplace. The proposed product will improve braille literacy, increase opportunities to enter careers in STEM, and ultimately lead to the employment success and independence of blind Americans.

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project continues efforts to adopt microfluidic technology in order to create a highly manufacturable full-page braille and tactile graphics display that uses pneumatic signals to actuate pins at braille spacing. The anticipated technical innovations shift certain drive functions from electromechanical hardware to the more cost effective and easily manufactured multilayered microfluidic substrate.

Since the ultimate objective for this phase of research is to create an integrated system for delivering interactive braille and tactile graphics, the team will focus on designing the interactive experience by which blind users access, on demand, the textual and non-textual information that they desire. The anticipated outcome of this project is a seamless array of actuated pins in a tablet­ sized device capable of presenting a half­ page of braille characters and tactile graphic images.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.