Thursday, April 12, 2007

Braille

When you cannot see, resources like Wikipedia are not available to you. When you cannot see, you need something like braille to make such resources available to you. You still have the issue who is going to convert text to braille.

RoboBraille is an organization that converts to several different formats that can be used by braille readers that work with computers. The software works by receiving an e-mail with the text that needs conversion.

I can imagine that this engine could work for a website as well.. Consider what a difference it would make when Wikipedia would be available in this way.. The converted pages can be cached like any other page. When there is an issue with doing this realtime or near realtime, it would be possible to do this for articles that are featured articles or that are part of a "final version".

I would love to see a solution like this to become part of the service that we provide.. We aim to bring all information to all people.. blind people qualify :)

Thanks,
GerardM

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