This is a fun side project. What I'm curious to know is: has any blind person actually tried any of Alexander Fakoó's scripts?
The reason I'm curious is that there's something funny that happens when sighted people create tactile technologies for the blind: they often don't consult with blind people at all. There's something appealing about the idea of theoretically assistive technology that leads to very impractical systems like Boston Line Type [1] or "braille displays" that have only one single character, that's 10x the normal size. It's easy to assume that if you can technically feel something then that's sufficient for blind people, but the history of blind writing systems shows us that's not enough.
This particular idea seems more promising than other efforts (e.g. Moon), because bumps seem to be easier to feel than shaped figures. It can also be written using a regular slate and stylus. However, modern Braille [2] is full of contractions to reduce the number of characters, and even then braille books are massive and heavy compared to their print counterparts. Doubling the width of individual letters and forgoing contractions really limits the utility to very small snippets of text, and learning an entirely new alphabet just for that doesn't seem very practical.
The author's website [3] is full of promises that "anyone" can read the writing system, but it also says "Developer is Alexander Fakoó, who has learned to read the Braille Writing optically". That's great, but sight-reading Braille is a whole different medium from tactile reading. Personally, I used to be able to read grade 1 braille by sight, but could never read by touch.
So the visually impaired would need to learn a new alphabet/representation all to make things readable to the sighted.
I don’t think that suggestion would go over well.
Also it looks like it would be less informative dense for a given area, which seems like a downside as well.
It’s a neat exercise and could make a cool font for an ultra-low resolution display. But this does not seem like a better solution than just printing normal text above/below/on top of the Braille.
Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like the advantage here is that as people loses their sight (slowly or quickly) they would quickly be able to pick up a tactile font with little to no additional training. Normal sighted people would also be able to read things in the dark (safety factor for things like power outages). Percent of people with blindness and vision impairment drastically increase by age so I think it is safe to say that most blind people aren't born blind.
They generally learn Latin letterforms already for reading embossed signage. These are designed to be composed from Braille pairs so that you get dual purpose text with existing production methods.
It's fine if the tactile letters intended for the blind don't look the same as the visual ones intended for the sighted; you can associate the whole set in a single day, provided that you're genuinely interested in doing so. (People don't do it because they don't see the point [pun not intended] in doing so.)
The actual issue with Braille, is that letters are often tactically similar. Even tactically, people identify shapes better than absolute positions over a grid; in this sense Braille is flawed by design (why just dots? Why not a mix of dots, curves and straight lines?), and Fakoo's alphabet doesn't solve this.
Mind that visual reading – I actually do not know about tactile, but I'd guess it may be similar – isn't about letter by letter, but about the impression of entire words. Here, similarity helps a lot. (Otherwise, you have not only learn the new alphabet, but the gestalt of all the words anew.)
Regarding Braille, my grandmother became mostly blind at old age. Having maintained an interest in books, while finding herself increasingly restricted with regard to her radius of action, she tried to learn Braille, but eventually gave up. At her age, she couldn't feel the differences anymore. Tactile resolution and significance do matter. (I'd imagine, in her case a similarity to what she had been used to may have also helped.)
Generally – while not knowing much about the viability of the specific implementation –, I think, Fakoo is a great idea.
Many years ago, I had tried developing a font style with each glyph resembling a blade of grass. The constraints were strongly enforced, so the optimized glyphs no longer resemble the original shapes.
https://imgur.com/a/8jTf7yn
I haven't looked it up, but I can't imagine this is acceptable under the ADA. For the vast majority of blind people I guess this would just be an incomprehensible bunch of bumps, failing in the accessibility mission.
[+] [-] tdeck|3 years ago|reply
The reason I'm curious is that there's something funny that happens when sighted people create tactile technologies for the blind: they often don't consult with blind people at all. There's something appealing about the idea of theoretically assistive technology that leads to very impractical systems like Boston Line Type [1] or "braille displays" that have only one single character, that's 10x the normal size. It's easy to assume that if you can technically feel something then that's sufficient for blind people, but the history of blind writing systems shows us that's not enough.
This particular idea seems more promising than other efforts (e.g. Moon), because bumps seem to be easier to feel than shaped figures. It can also be written using a regular slate and stylus. However, modern Braille [2] is full of contractions to reduce the number of characters, and even then braille books are massive and heavy compared to their print counterparts. Doubling the width of individual letters and forgoing contractions really limits the utility to very small snippets of text, and learning an entirely new alphabet just for that doesn't seem very practical.
The author's website [3] is full of promises that "anyone" can read the writing system, but it also says "Developer is Alexander Fakoó, who has learned to read the Braille Writing optically". That's great, but sight-reading Braille is a whole different medium from tactile reading. Personally, I used to be able to read grade 1 braille by sight, but could never read by touch.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_line_letter
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Braille
[3]: https://fakoo.de/en/fakoo.html
[+] [-] avmich|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smegsicle|3 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33127419
[+] [-] MBCook|3 years ago|reply
I don’t think that suggestion would go over well.
Also it looks like it would be less informative dense for a given area, which seems like a downside as well.
It’s a neat exercise and could make a cool font for an ultra-low resolution display. But this does not seem like a better solution than just printing normal text above/below/on top of the Braille.
[+] [-] godelski|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevin_thibedeau|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smcameron|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neilv|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] godelski|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] canadaduane|3 years ago|reply
I see that "Z" must take what would naturally be an "I" shape on a 3x3 grid, but why not use just a simple vertical line for "I"?
[+] [-] knutwannheden|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thih9|3 years ago|reply
Perhaps predictable character width (monospace) makes reading easier.
[1]: https://omniglot.com/conscripts/siekoo.htm
[+] [-] transfire|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lvxferre|3 years ago|reply
The actual issue with Braille, is that letters are often tactically similar. Even tactically, people identify shapes better than absolute positions over a grid; in this sense Braille is flawed by design (why just dots? Why not a mix of dots, curves and straight lines?), and Fakoo's alphabet doesn't solve this.
[+] [-] masswerk|3 years ago|reply
Regarding Braille, my grandmother became mostly blind at old age. Having maintained an interest in books, while finding herself increasingly restricted with regard to her radius of action, she tried to learn Braille, but eventually gave up. At her age, she couldn't feel the differences anymore. Tactile resolution and significance do matter. (I'd imagine, in her case a similarity to what she had been used to may have also helped.)
Generally – while not knowing much about the viability of the specific implementation –, I think, Fakoo is a great idea.
[+] [-] dtgriscom|3 years ago|reply
Because it was easier for the technology of the day (invented in 1824) to reliably emboss dots.
[+] [-] rrwo|3 years ago|reply
Also, considering that so much is written in Braille, how many people use this?
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] gauddasa|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adastra22|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yodon|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bee_rider|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oh_my_goodness|3 years ago|reply