Abstract: System and method to enable blind people to detect and access hyperlinks within Braille documents. A proximity sensing foil placed under a Braille page senses the position of a reader's fingertips and provides coordinates of the sensed position. A workstation computes the distance between the sensed position and the predefined positions hyperlinks the page is known to contain, which are initially stored in a hyperlink table. When the user's fingertips are positioned over a hyperlink, the computed distance is less than a threshold value, in which case an acoustic signal alerts the user that a hyperlink is present. The user may then access the hyperlink.
Type:
Grant
Filed:
February 15, 2002
Date of Patent:
January 8, 2008
Assignee:
International Business Machines Corporation