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Braille was developed in 1824. Its design was constrained by the technology of the day. It has been the standard tactile alphabet for 190 years. However, only 59,000 people in the U.S. can read braille, out of a visually impaired population of 8.3 million people. This low adoption rate (less than 1%) is due in large part because braille is difficult for previously sighted people to learn. For those who cannot read braille, a new alphabet and font, named the ELIA Frame™ Touch Font has been developed. It adheres to basic industrial design principles. It builds on one’s existing knowledge of the Roman alphabet. It utilizes a frame, so that the reader can identify where one letter ends and another begins. It allows for systematic exploration of its characters. It is scalable, so that people of varied tactile acuities can read it. Lastly, a person losing their vision can read it visually with their residual vision and tactilely with their fingers – thereby accelerating their learning and reading rates. The current design is the result of over 12,000 hours of testing and data analysis. Over 200,000 subject responses were evaluated during an iterative design process that took seven years. The result is a font that can be learned in an afternoon (vs. braille, which takes months or years to master). This talk will explore the process through which the font was designed – what worked, what did not work, what was required. It will also include a discussion of how the font may help people who have lost their vision. And it will explore the road ahead – the challenges and the opportunities.

Andrew Chepatis leads a product development team at ELIA Life Technology. In addition to its work on the ELIA Frame Touch Font, his team is developing tactile printing and display technology that will both enable people to read the new font and enable the sighted and the blind new access to information through touch. He serves as a grant reviewer for the National Institutes of Health. Prior to founding ELIA Life he was an equity research analyst.