#A11y – Extensive Alt Text and Transcript below to enjoy with the video

The TouchPad Pro Foundation Presentation

Title appears, the BrailleDoodle the Touchpad Pro Foundation touchpadprofoundation.org A young boy with dark skin with buzzed black hair and a big smile is touching a house on the BrailleDoodle prototype. Alt text- Title reads, The TouchPad Pro Foundation.

Throughout the video, Daniel is showing slides from a PowerPoint Presentation. His video is playing in a small box in the upper right-hand corner. He has short dark hair, is wearing a green polo, and is sitting in front of the fall leaves and pine trees behind a lake background.

Opens with a slide show of kids who are blind. Teenagers doing art. A girl with a backpack and a can. A boy painting with his face close to a painting. A young girl with glasses. Two small children doing arts and crafts. 3 Little kids, 2 boys, and a girl in a hallway holding their canes.

Slide 1-

A toddler who is blind is pressing her face against her father’s face.

“Hi, my name is Daniel Lubiner. I am the president of the Touchpad Pro Foundation.

I’m a veteran teacher of 25 years. And for the last five years, I was teaching the blind and low vision. I was teaching them art. They inspired me so much. I started thinking of these products, and then the pandemic hit and there was like no teaching of braille, no teaching of art. So I thought of a new product and formed a foundation to get this product out in the hands of students everywhere.”

SLIDE 2

Alt text- Title ‘The Problem’ – 3 pictures A blind man in a museum, a blind woman studying at a table, a blind man using his phone. The text reads-  Limited access to art. Only 32% graduate high school. Only 16% college. More than 70% are unemployed. One in three live in poverty.

“There is a problem when the blind and low vision try to access or create art. We can pick up a pencil or a pen wherever we are. We have Etch-a-Sketch, Magna Doodle. What if the blind and low vision had something that was made just for them? And then I started seeing these statistics. Only 32% graduate from high school and 16% college. And of course that leads to a future where one in three are living in poverty and massive unemployment.”

SLIDE 3

Text is read aloud. A pie chart illustrates the “85% Braille Literate”

“And then we had a look. How important is braille? Of the 30% who are employed, 85% use braille. But it’s like a no-brainer, right? If you teach kids how to read and write, they’re going to do better in school and employment. But only 10% of kids are learning braille and that is out of 700,000 in the United States alone.” 

SLIDE 4 Text is read aloud.

Alt text picture on the left – Young Hispanic girl, about 5, in a white blouse and black and yellow glasses, is smiling. She is holding the BrailleDoodle. For Braille learning and tactile art. On the surface is a house, a capital letter H, and the word house in braille. A quote says, “I made this!”

Alt text picture right – The BrailleDoodle on its side, with the Braille Cover over the BrailleDoodle creating dozens of rectangular cutouts covering the surface. Each rectangle is a braille cell. A white stylus is writing Braille.

“Our solution is the BrailleDoodle. It will be affordable and high quality with just magnets. You’ll be able to create touchable drawings, learn braille in person or remotely.

You could have independent learning with all

kinds of specialized cover options, like for

geometry or math or shapes or drawing.”

BrailleDoodle Video

Description of the BrailleDoodle in the video is as follows:

The BrailleDoodle is a device for braille literacy and tactile Art. It is about a laptop size; only it is made in hard dark blue plastic. An array of hundreds of holes, placed tightly together, cover the surface. Each hole contains a tiny metal ball that can be pulled to the surface by a magnetic stylus and locked into place to create a touchable effect. The user erases a creation by pushing the balls back down. The magnetic stylus stored in a slot on the side is e attached to the BrailleDoodle with a spring cord.

There will be one side for drawing and another for learning and practicing braille. On the braille side, four lines contain examples and practice space for each letter. There is also the capital sign, the number sign, and the words and, for, of, and the in braille with a space. In the example braille cell, the only functioning holes will be those that make that particular letter. So a learner can make an example of just that letter repeatedly, and then next to it, the learner can practice making the letter with the six functioning holes next to it to practice that letter.

Beneath each braille cell example is the print letter capitalized. Beneath each practice braille cell is the braille letter in actual size on a raised rectangle. All cells are broken up with thin tactile lines. These braille sections are larger holes and metal balls for people to feel them easier.
Below the braille alphabet are three lines of about 20 braille cells. These are smaller holes with smooth metal balls that are made up of 6 dot clusters.

There will be specialized cover options acting as stencils on the drawing side. The BrailleDoodle will have notches in the corners, which will hold the flat covers in place over the drawing side. 

Then flat covers can include Nemeth, punctuation, contractions, shapes, graphs, and braille in different languages. The first edition will have braille in Hindi covers included.

The video then has a fast montage of children, adults, and teachers enjoying the BrailleDoodle.

Video with audio description available here: https://www.touchpadprofoundation.org/brailledoodle-video/