Improving design of piezoelectric braille cell for braille display devices

Abstract

The braille system is one of the most recognizable language systems for those with visual disabilities. With the advance of technology, the use of braille system is not only limited to physical books with raised dots, but it is also has been implemented in mechanical devices. This allows digital information to also be displayed to be read by the visually impaired, using the devices called braille displays. However, one of the key components in braille displays are braille cells, which shows the desired braille characters. This technology is yet to be available in many countries especially in Malaysia, whereas the purchase of one set of the braille cells is often very expensive. More ever, the commercial braille cell has a cap breaking loose issue where it is easily being detached, disassembled and broken. Thus, this research aims to improve and resolve this issue by designing and fabricating a braille cell that consists of lock mechanisms. The result shows that by having this lock mechanics, it can resolve the cap breaking loose issues that happened in a commercial braille cell. On the other hand, this study also aims to evaluate the quality and feasibility of using 3D printing technology in fabricating braille cells to mimic the commercial ones. This can be done by analyzing the performance in term of dots stroke between the fabricated and commercial braille cell. The result shows that fabricated braille cell obtains a larger stroke length compare to the commercial braille cell at 0.75 mm against 0.7 mm respectively. This indicates that the fabricated braille cell dots would be more distinguishable for the blind people fingertips when they are reading the braille alphabets or characters. The greater increase in stroke length will result in clearer reading to the user and thus desirable.