The Omnifer Is A Braille Concept For The iPad

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Designer Jayson D’Alessandro put together this concept for href="http://www.yankodesign.com/2011/08/11/braille-ipad/">the Omnifer, a braille reader concept for the iPad. He imagines a thin layer of plastic which sits on the screen, and reacts to the light to pop up braille dots so that visually impaired people can use it to read.

I’m all for increased accessibility for non-traditional users, but this design has some major flaws. The idea of using little gas pockets to pop up the dots? Seriously? And the resolution of the device appears to only be three letters wide by 12 high, so that means a total of 36 characters readable at once.

And what’s even worse is that iOS 4 has href="http://www.everythingicafe.com/iphone-4-natively-supports-braille/2010/07/13/">built in braille support. You just hook your device to a braille reader, and you’re away laughing.

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