World’s most intuitive Tactile Reading system @ New Touch Alphabet – Set to rival Braille
Could This New Tactile Font Help People Who Lose Their Sight Late In Life?
ELIA Frames may serve some blind readers better than braille, but the new system has its skeptics
Elia Vallone once filled her days with mystery novels, newspapers and New York Times crossword puzzles. But at age 74, her vision began to fail.
Vallone had macular degeneration—a breakdown of the rod- and cone-shaped cells in the eye that convert light into electrical signals for the brain. In the worst of cases, as Vallone had, this means near total vision loss. “I couldn’t stand the idea of her being shut down because she could no longer read,” her daughter Elia Chepaitis told People magazine in 1988.
Vallone attempted to learn braille, to no avail. And she isn’t alone. Though reliable statistics are not available for the number of braille readers (an oft-cited, but outdated figure is less than 10 percent of legally blind Americans), people who lose sight and are already out of school are thought to be less likely to learn braille than those who start young.
Because of this, Andrew Chepaitis, Vallone’s grandson, wants to flip the braille script. The former equity research analyst founded the company ELIA Life Technology, which aims to create a tactile alphabet that echoes the Roman characters, tailored to people who lose their sight later in life.
The company makes the bold claim that their new system is “the world’s most intuitive tactile reading system.” But the upstart is stirring controversy in the braille community, with many questioning if an alternative is necessary at all.
“Reading tactilely is a bit like reading through frosted glass, so it kind of blurs together,” says Chepaitis. To tackle this issue, the ELIA system—or “font” as the company calls it—houses each character in a frame to guide readers from letter to letter.
Full Article Available @ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/could-this-new-tactile-font-help-people-who-lose-their-sight-late-in-life-180968917/
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