12-year-old invents Braille printer using Lego set
The Braigo printer cost its inventor about $350, making it more affordable than other Braille printers that can retail for more than $2,000.And because I seriously side-eye this Western journalism trend of never crediting and NAMING the actual inventors in the headlines (especially when they’re young POC)
this inventor’s name is Shubham Banerjee, and he is making his glorious design completely open source, publishing it online FREE of charge! Just remember this kid’s name before some crusty old white dude “innovates” his design and takes all the credit.
This isn’t a good thing. This post explains why.
The BRAIGO design shows profound ignorance of how people create and read braille, and the designer never mentions any interaction with blind people. The designer says on his Facebook site ”it requires 10-15 seconds to make one braille letter” (actually, they’re called “cells.”) The BRAIGO embosses one cell per line on the same paper that’s used for cash register receipts, which isn’t strong enough to hold a braille dot for very long. Since braille format information is conveyed through printing characters (like asterisks and underlines in email), a single cell line can’t have any format information. That’s why the BRAIGO can’t create useful braille.
When I contacted the designer, he wrote BRAIGO is “a proof of concept and with the design and code to be made public, the idea is anybody can use it and enhance.” In other words, more people can spend time playing with a device that produces almost unreadable, unstoreable, unformatted braille. No research or knowledge about actual braille production seems to be part of the package. The designer’s best output right now is public relations. The device is a one-off prototype, and the designer never plans a shipping product. Every accolade this young man receives also spreads misinformation.
The headline “embossers, once $2000, now $350” is popping up like fireflies on 1000s of sites. Now imagine when a braille user goes to the boss for a embosser. “How much are we looking at?” the boss asks. The employee replies, “For a decent one, $5000.” The boss says, “But I read about one that costs $350 on Upworthy?” A $350 embosser would be an amazing thing. Hundreds of well-intentioned editors and readers are willing to take the inventor’s word for it. But this device is not a embosser.
And thus a 12 year old decides marketing is more important than listening to actual disabled people.