FW: USA: Online book-sharing service for the blind borrows a page from Napster

[Janina Sajka]

OK. Next problem! <grin>

Full page braille displays have long been a kind of holy grail that we 
dream of and can't attain. As things stand, a single line display is 
horrendously expensive.

We need a breakthrough. We need two breakthroughs, actually:

1.)	Price. Anything we know today says this would go through the 
ceiling--tens of thousands of dollars, at least;

2.)	Complexity. I don't know that we understand how to build anything 
this complicated and keep it controlled. Current single line displays are 
already very complicated, mechanically--which is why they're so expensive.

My conclusion: Were we to make breakthroughs on the above two points we'd 
want a full page braille display before this kind of unit.


-- 
	
				Janina Sajka, Director
				Technology Research and Development
				Governmental Relations Group
				American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)

Email: janina at afb.net		Phone: (202) 408-8175

Chair, Accessibility SIG
Open Electronic Book Forum (OEBF)
http://www.openebook.org