braille input

[Janina Sajka]

It comes down to software almost more than hardware, imho. What's the
difference between yesterday and today on this subject? What got us so
jazzed? PDA's have been around for awhile, so what was different this
time.

I think it was the notion of Linux as the OS. Why is that
exciting? Because it is quickly repurposed to our needs, whereas something
like Palm OS -- or WinCE isn't.

I think a touch screen would make a good cheap test. The trick is to build
the reliable daemon to grab the jabs and convert them accuratly to
keyboard input. The rest -- well it isn't exactly trivial -- but it would
be much much a bigger job under these other OS's. All of this would be a
bigger job.


				Janina Sajka, Director
				Information Systems Research & Development
				American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)

janina at afb.net


On Fri, 10 Mar 2000, Buddy Brannan wrote:

> Hey,
> 
> Just a thought, but, well, here's a thought. If we wanna explore the whole
> touch screen using braille input idea, why not schnag one of those tablet
> PC's? I think Computer Geeks has one lately, but of course no HDD
> installed. 8MB RAM though and a 486. Once we actually get some software
> written to do braille input on a touch screen, I wonder if we might do a
> first prototype on one of those? Well, it's a thought anyway. Specially if
> we can find refurbs or lower-end ones to mess with. 
> 
> --
> Buddy Brannan, KB5ELV
> Email: davros at ycardz.com
> Voice mail: 877-791-5298
> All opinions are all mine!
> 
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