The Ability-project will use the Dot Pad tactile screen with 2400 dots to investigate different aspects of pin display’s image rendering and pin display image understanding. Out of the box, the Dot Pad is simple to set up and run and the battery seems to keep well. It has a handy web-app with tools that can import image files, but it is also easy to draw your own simple images with it.
The image file importer can do some simple filtering but works best for high-contrast drawings, making it mostly suitable for prepared material, like maps and diagrams for school use. Even simple line drawings are sometimes not optimally filtered, with the result that there are two lines rendered instead of one (for each high-contrast transition). For it to be useful to display a large variety of images, like in web pages, more advanced AI image filtering is probably needed.
Localized audio feedback would also be a useful addition, but the present solution cannot detect finger placement (like a touch screen for example), and thus, audio information can only be provided for the entire image (such as an alt-text).
Kirsten Rassmus-Gröhn
Lund University
Comments