Robotic Technology and Artificial Intelligence in Rehabilitation Medicine
Lawrence S. Chan, William C. Tang in Engineering-Medicine, 2019
Throughout history, many inventions and innovations in the medical field have been inspired by the need to improve or replace an existing body part that has a deficient or a lost function due to different conditions. Alexander Graham Bell’s mother lost her hearing when he was twelve years old. This tragic event encouraged Bell to become interested in acoustics, and later led to the development of telegraph and telephone (BELL 2018). During the two World Wars, many soldiers lost their limbs. As a consequence, prosthetic technologies have made significant strides, therefore benefited people with traumatic and non-traumatic amputations. Louis Braille became completely blind by age five due to a childhood accident. He worked diligently to develop a code, dots and dashes impressed into thick paper, for the French alphabet for night writing and later musical notations. Eventually in 1837, he invented the first small binary writing and reading system, called Braille, which blind people still use today (LOUIS BRAILLE 2018).
Abnormal Behavior
L.S. Vygotsky, V.V. Davydov, Silverman Robert in Educational Psychology, 2020
The machine used in communication between the blind and deaf mutes is a good indication of the state of the entire educational process. Communication is based on the use of the six dots of the Braille code, which are embossed by depressing the six corresponding buttons of the machine; by depressing the buttons, the blind person produces the desired combination of dots and forms words out of them, which the deaf person then reads. For his part, the deaf person performing the same task leads the blind person to feel the raised dots and thereby to grasp his meaning. Here we see how easy it is for education to triumph over physical disability and create an opportunity for social intercourse, and, consequently, for individual development, through the formation of new conditional relations.
Empirical Evidence on the Difference Between Left and Right Hemispheres in Perceptual Processes
Robert Miller in Axonal Conduction Time and Human Cerebral Laterality, 2019
Hermelin and O’Connor (1971) made a chance observation that a blind child who could read Braille was totally unable to do this when he had injured what he called his “reading” (left) hand. They followed this with an experiment in which it was shown that blind children (8-10 years) read Braille more quickly with the left hand than the right. Blind adults showed no difference between hands in speed of reading, but their accuracy was better with the left than the right middle finger. Two other studies of normal subjects confirm these results. Rudel et al. (1974) taught Braille characters to normal sighted children using the “paired associates” method (i.e. a tactile-verbal association). Although this was in part a verbal task, it was performed better with the left than the right hand.
An interactive math braille learning application to assist blind students in Bangladesh
Published in Assistive Technology, 2022
Lutfun Nahar, Riza Sulaiman, Azizah Jaafar
Before describing the problem in this project, it is necessary to clarify few background information regarding mathematics for blind people. Braille is the most accepted method that is invented for the blind students to read and write in their academia (Braille, 1829). Louis Braille invented braille and introduced the idea of raised-dot system to a cell of 3 × 2 binary matrix, as in Figure 1a. This matrix can represent 64 (26 = 64) different characters (Schweikhardt, Bernareggi, Jessel, Encelle, & Gut, 2006; Southern, Clawson, Frey, Abowd, & Romero, 2012). Braille characters represent numbers, symbols, and distinct alphabetical characters. Sixty-four distinct combinations are perfectly adequate to represent literary texts (essentially made up of 26 letters, 10 digits and a small number of punctuation symbols). However, science and mathematics require many symbols, thus only 64 combinations are not enough to represent all the symbols. The conventional braille code for mathematics has some limitations; for example, some of the notations have very complex combination of braille cells. To make the things easier Nemeth code is introduced later, which provides easy combinations of braille dots for all the mathematics and science notations.
Matuto, Magbasa, Maglaro: Learning to read braille through play
Published in Assistive Technology, 2021
Rhianne M. Lopez, Shane D. Pinder, T. Claire Davies
While our co-design process attempted to include members of different groups who were either learning, had learned, or were teaching braille, there are several limitations to our approach. First, we identified individuals who were learning braille as those who were under the age of 18 and did not specifically request information about their age in the questionnaire. Many children would only fall within the “learning” category for a few years and may begin to learn braille and sensory skills at a very young age (pre-school perhaps); however, age information was not sought from our participants. Secondly, individuals with visual impairment have wide heterogeneity due to many factors including the amount of vision loss, age of onset, and the presence of other disabilities. The device could be used or interpreted in different ways depending on the users’ abilities. While co-design attempts to create a universally designed device, limitations contribute to its effectiveness for different populations. Finally, it is important to note that while the spacing and relative size of the cells and dots on the device were designed to be scaled to the typical braille spacing, one cannot assume transference between the device and reading abilities. Letters on the device rely on feeling large pegs with the fingers and hand rather than fingertip touch, which could potentially lead to confusion when comparing to typical braille-sized systems. These limitations could potentially contribute to biasing the results.
Increasing the autonomy of deafblind individuals through direct access to content broadcasted on digital terrestrial television
Published in Assistive Technology, 2020
Angel García-Crespo, Mariuxi Montes-Chunga, Carlos Alberto Matheus-Chacin, Ines Garcia-Encabo
There are documented experiences that use Braille display to communicate television CCs to the deafblind population, although none of these prototypes or systems are currently in operation.TeleCaption Braille System. With output available in Braille and large print, funded by a federal grant (Biederman-Anderson, 1989).CC/Braille Computer System. A video recorder sends CCs to a card that transforms the subtitles to Braille, which is installed on an IBM compatible computer (Akhil et al., n.d.). The concept reported positive results among users, but high technology costs and limited marketing possibilities due to the low incidence of deafblindness have prevented new developments based on these prototypes.The CUPID project, an information management system, won a SMART award from the UK. Department of Commerce and Industry. Its aim was to develop a portable computer system with multimodal output that can be used as a personal organizer and information manager. It was designed primarily for accessing and storing textual information. The system patented a tactile output device from a visual output from the TV system (Nissen, 1997).The Gallaudet Technology Access Project concept test (Gallaudet University, 2015). This application extracts CC data from a movie and generates the data on a refreshable Braille screen. The developer of this tool wrote the code to interact with the Xine open source media player, and intercepts CAE-608 CCs.
Related Knowledge Centers
- Speech Synthesis
- Visual Impairment
- Refreshable Braille Display
- Slate & Stylus
- Perkins Brailler
- Braille Embosser
- Transcription
- English Braille
- Screen Reader
- Braille Translator