Summer is a playful time, and although many of us prefer to lounge by the water, in the heat we may still feel like spending time playing computer games in an air-conditioned room. 😊
Brail is making a statement in this area too. And although I’ll only tease you for now with announcement about incomming new age of gamming, still it is worth to get ready fo possible tactile game console.
So playing with braille in a digital environment. This is not entirely new, there have already been several games for single-line braille displays, for example in the educational process. One of such games, for example, is Treasure Hunt by ObjectiveEd. This company develops technologies for the education of pupils/students with various disabilities. Among the many other important and helpful features of their device is the Treasure Hunt game. Brief Description:
A teacher/coach enters a task (text to read) on a web-based control panel.
The game tells the student to read the sentence aloud, from the braille display.
Using artificial intelligence and speech recognition, (as we know it from amazon or google home assistants, but also from mobile phones) the pupil/student’s speech is converted into text, into words that are sent to the teacher as a solution to the task.
The teacher/braille trainer verifies the student’s oral answer and confirms the correctness if the solution is correct. This brings the pupil closer to the treasure room and closer to soon win the game!
What will be next?
Multi-line braille displays are a novelty in their own right and are slowly coming into wider use.
Bristol Braille Technology has developed a 9-line braille display, Canute 360, which is establishing nicely on the market, not least because of its relatively low price. The line is an excellent reading option. As the developers say: “We already know that braille has the potential to change the way we interact with the world, but what about video games?”
Bristol Braille Technology is currently testing a prototype braille gaming console in a mobile braille arcade and experimenting with creating worlds for discovery on touch.They have modified the Canute 360 and created a prototype dock that extends the applications on the Canute and represents a braille gaming console.
The console has so far successfully run versions of the cult game Snake, maze traversal games, Hangman, and even a game called City Explorer!
These tactile experiences are scripted on the Canute 360 itself in common computer languages like Python, making it the first multi-line braille workstation.
Hopefully, even though these technologies are having a hard time breaking into the market due to their cost and distribution complications, they will reach the market in every EU country in the next few years and will be able to serve school children and braillists for work and play.