Refreshable Braille oral appliance

Abstract

The Refreshable Braille Oral Appliance (or RBOA) is a refreshable display embedded in an oral retainer connected to a wireless microphone and through a smart phone application. Previous research was conducted as an investigation to determine if Braille could be read with the tongue. Results showed promise for providing deaf persons with assistive technology to assist in understanding spoken language. Potential other uses of such a technology include any use of reading Braille in an unobtrusive manner through a hidden oral appliance and reading Braille or refreshable display content using the tongue. An oral appliance could also be used as a control for any remote controllable technology such as lights, televisions, door locks, climate control, and wheelchairs. The research included a tactile comparison between the index fingers and the tongue to discover if the tongue had enough sensitivity to read Braille. Ten participants, five sighted and five blind, experienced with Braille, were asked to compare Braille letters in a mixed design. The participants compared Braille letters between the tips of the index fingers of both hands. They also compared the Braille stimulus between their dominant index finger and their tongue. A 2 × 2 mixed analysis of variance revealed that participants could read Braille with their tongues as easily as they could with their non-dominant index finger. Braille readers matched more letters than sighted participants in both conditions, but the difference was not significant.