Top-Braille has a camera which takes pictures of the surface on which it is placed. Those pictures are sent to a very powerful processor which has the ability of analyzing tens of them each second. Whenever there is text on the photography, Top-Braille identifies the characters but also the way they are positioned. The central character is recognized and instantaneously transmitted in Braille to the cell (six dot cell). You can also choose to hear the recognized character in audio. When the character is not well positioned, two additional dots placed on the cell are activated and provide you with indications on how to move Top-Braille to position it correctly on the line of text. We name navigation the information (higher, lower, rotate to the right, rotate to the left) helping you with your positioning; navigation can also be provided to you through specific sounds.
No, Top-Braille is an autonomous device containing all the necessary electronics and software to operate alone. There is no need for you to own a computer to use Top-Braille.
Thanks to its small size, you can take Top-Braille with you everywhere.
No, having a very fast memory, it requires hardly a second for all software to be loaded into the processor. Top-Braille is immediately ready for use when turned on.
Within a couple of minutes you’ll be able to read words. Top-Braille is delivered with a learning guide. We recommend that you take the four hour training program in order to have a very good handling of the device.
We have developed and configured Top-Braille with blind people; these people today read books with the device.
Top-Braille is being manufactured. In autumn, we will organise trial days during trade shows and with associations in order for you to be able to try Top-Braille.
The Braille cell of Top-Braille which has been developed by Metec, cell world leader, can display up to twenty characters per second.
When using Top-Braille, characters appear instantaneously on the cell. The faster you move Top-Braille on text, the faster characters are displayed on the cell. The slower you move Top-Braille on text, the longer the characters stay displayed on the cell.
In short, you are the one who decides of the speed of appearance of a string of characters on the Braille cell according to the speed at which you move Top-Braille over text.
Top-Braille can read in both directions; from left to right and from right to left. If you have skipped characters because of a bad positioning on the line or if you are not sure of the last characters you read, you can move Top-Braille backwards in order to read again those characters.
If you were to wait to having moved Top-Braille over an entire word in order to obtain a word by word reading, how would you know that you were positioned at the beginning of the word and that you have moved Top-Braille over all the letters of that word?
The success of Top-Braille and its ease of use come from the fact that you are instantaneously informed of the presence of characters and eventual errors in your positioning.
Top-Braille is so specific that each of its elements has been developed from scratch. When we initially set the objectives with a group of blind people, we realized that there were no elements available on the market for us to use.
The camera is specific and captures 60 images per second. A movie only has 24 images per second.
We chose the best processor and designed the electronic board specifically as no portable device on the market was able to analyse tens of pictures each second and therefore enable an easy and instantaneous use of Top-Braille.
We had to develop the character recognition and navigation software in order to obtain an excellent rate of recognition of a large variety of fonts printed in various colors.
