Your daily frequent11y newsletter, brought to you by @ChrisBAshton:

The Monarch could be the next big thing in Braille

A collaboration project between HumanWare and the American Printing House for the Blind (APH) has resulted in the Monarch: a “multipurpose” Braille device.

Refreshable Braille displays have existed for years, but have been expensive, slow to refresh, and fragile. A new “braille pin mechanism” created by startup Dot has been incorporated into the design: these pins are individually replaceable and are much faster to raise.

APH partnered with over 30 international organisations to create a new electronic braille standard, called eBRF. “This will provide additional functionality to Monarch users including the ability to jump page to page (with page numbers matching the print book pages numbers), and the ability for tactile graphics directly into the book file, allowing the text and graphics to display seamlessly on the page.”

The author notes that the graphical capability is “a serious leap forward”. It will now be possible for braille readers to pull up a visual of a graph, animal, letter or number shape, allowing the consumption of simple graphics. From APH.org:

The Monarch is approximately 4.5 pounds and the size of a 15-inch gaming laptop. The device features an 8-dot braille keyboard, zoom in/out buttons, direction pads, up/down arrow buttons, and a 10 line by 32 cell refreshable braille display, which is capable of rendering multiple lines of braille and tactile graphics with equidistant pins. This technology will bridge the educational gap for students along with the development of a new dynamic file type that will bring braille and graphics together in a navigable file.

The Monarch is not currently available to purchase. You can sign up to product updates on the website above.

Prefer longer newsletters? You can subscribe to week11y, fortnight11y or even month11y updates! Every newsletter gets the same content; it is your choice to have short, regular emails or longer, less frequent ones. Curated with ♥ by developer @ChrisBAshton.