A survey on innovative refreshable braille display technologies

Abstract

This works presents a survey on recent technologies applied for Refreshable Braille Displays (RBD): these devices allow the dynamic rendering of refreshable Braille characters, analogously to a computer monitor rendering text and other visual information. Although commercially available RBD share a similar technology based on piezo actuators, and feature a single line of characters at a relatively high cost, alternative solutions have been proposed in recent years. They include adaptation of existing actuators and technologies to the rendering of Braille, and innovative materials used for developing actuators appositely designed for RBDs. In this survey, we compare performance of the above methods analyzing potential benefits and limitations of the different technologies.