3D Printing has always been close to the blind, with a variety of projects, touching on accessible Tourism topics, 3D-Braille translation software up to the Prado Museum project for 3D prints for non-commercials blind.
Today, a new Read Read device launched on Kickstarter aims to make Braille accessible to the visually impaired. Reading with the help of 3D printing can in fact help reduce illiteracy rates in the blind community and increase education. Currently in the United States, only 12% of blind people receive a kind of Braille education.
Read Read, is a simple device, essentially a set of tiles, each of which represents the sounds of English. Tiles have visual sound (one letter, for example), the Braille equivalent and a touch-capacitive technology that allows users to hear the sound of the tile when it is touched. To use the Read Read system, users simply need to interact with the tiles, placing them in different orders to create words.
“The biggest braille literacy barrier is a lack or absence of high quality braille instructions. Currently, blind students are unable to learn and practice braille reading independently: all their learning figures on the presence of a teacher who knows both braille and how to teach reading “reads on the Kickstarter page of the device According to the Read Read page, 97% of blind people who can not read the braille are unemployed.
Read Read offers a potential solution to this problem, and a lot of work is needed to design and optimize the system. 3D printing has been used throughout the design process to ensure that tile sizes are easy to use for young, teens and blind adults. The device was experimented for a period of twelve weeks at Perkins for the Blind School in Watertown, Massachusetts and overall received positive reviews from students and teachers
A Kickstarter campaign for Read Read is currently underway and seeks to raise $ 273,000.
We hope that this project will arrive as soon as possible in Europe and Italy and we will be happy to cooperate!!
