Spotlight with Charlene Xia of Team Tactile: Creators of Tactile: A Real-Time Text to Braille Device

March 24, 2017 11:21 am

In this Spotlight Interview, James Oates sits down with Charlene Xia of Team Tactile, the creators of Tactile, which is a handheld real-time text to braille device, about the size of a candy bar.

Six young women who are all engineering students at MIT have designed a device called Tactile. This device has a camera on the back and 36cells of braille on the front. You run it over text, and the camera captures the text, OCR software recognizes and converts the text, and it is displayed on the front in braille.
Listen to the podcast to get all the details.

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About James Oates

James Oates officially joined the Cool Blind Tech podcast team in the summer of 2014. James is an advocate of accessible technology across all platforms, with an emphasis on Windows. As a former K-12 educator, James brings his passion for teaching to the CBT audience in an effort to help listeners realize their potential and explore new avenues of empowerment through technology. Blind since childhood, James currently lives in Florida.
You can follow him on Twitter, @BLIND_MATRIX

VIP Android Event: Enter the Nexus, or “Nexai!”

The grammar-precise side of me cringes a little when using the word “nexai,” but from an accessibility perspective, it fits well! Join Me, Leo, and Quentin on a Marshmallow expedition in this edition of the VIP roundtable podcast, as Cool Blind Tech dissects the Google event and uncovers an array of nexus devices.

First, we have the Nexus 5X. The device features a 5.2 inch screen at a resolution of 1080 x 1920, a Snapdragon 64-bit 808 processor, and 2 gigabytes of ram. It comes in 16 or 32 GB versions. Google also talked up their new always-on OK Google feature, but why not listen to the podcast to find out more? The phone starts at $379 USD.

The other phone, The Nexus 6P features a larger 5.7 inch screen, a faster CPU, but at a higher $499 price point.

Finally, we spoke of some of the features in Marshmallow, such as the new features for permissions. Find a list of features here, as posted on the Android website.

Google also introduced a slew of Chromecast devices. One is the Regular $35 Chromecast which features better wifi with dual-band AC, plus a detachable HDMI cable. Another is the Chromecast Audio , which is also $35 but is geared towards audio-only streaming, through a 3.5 MM aux jack to your stereo or through optical input.

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