Braille Labeler from the MIT IDEAS Competition

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By Make: television
Posted 2010/02/09 @ 2:01 pm
Category General

A group of MIT students set out to invent a Braille labeler for the MIT IDEAS Competition. Along the way they seemed to grasp a few cornerstones of invention: learning from failures, knowing your customer base and pursuing your ideas.

In the Maker Shed

Cube 3D Printer

Getting Started with Raspberry Pi

Calculator Kit from Spikenzie Labs

BrushBots

3 Responses to Braille Labeler from the MIT IDEAS Competition

chrome on February 10th, 2010 at 8:14 am said:

Label their movies?

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Viadd on February 10th, 2010 at 6:58 pm said:

Dymo braille labeler. $20. Hand-powered. Not as fast for long labels, but if you only need “baked beans” or “heart medicine” then it is faster than dragging out the MIT bralier out of a closet, plugging it in, and typing 20 characters.Dymo braille labeler. $20. Hand-powered. Not as fast for long labels, but if you only need “baked beans” or “heart medicine” then it is faster than dragging out the MIT bralier out of a closet, plugging it in, and typing 20 characters.

http://www.braillebookstore.com/view.php?T=Handheld+Braille+Labeler

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- tshannon on February 11th, 2010 at 7:53 am said:
  
  It’s interesting you should mention that dymo labeler. As it turns out, the dymo handheld labeler is the bane of many blind people’s labeling efforts. After talking with customters, we found that it causes hand fatigue (being hand powered), breaks easily, and is very hard to use for a blind person. Additionally, the user is limited to A-Z, plus a few extra characters, so they can’t do braille contractions/abbreviations (grade 2 braille). Also, the above labeler is battery powered (no plugging in) and very portable. Definitely some people will be fine with a dymo labeler, but we found that there are plenty of people not OK with the current options, which led us to this design.
  
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