NewHaptics

NewHaptics is developing a first-of-its-kind tablet device for the blind that enables true digital access to information. As opportunities in education and the workplace are becoming increasingly dependent on information and digital literacy, blind people are being left behind by insufficient assistive technologies. Nothing currently available on the market comes close to delivering the immediacy and depth of interaction afforded to sighted people by modern computing devices. 

Our solution is a tablet device that combines the power of modern computing with a novel shape-changing touchscreen surface to enable access to websites, images, books, and more using the sense of touch. Our product will empower blind people around the world to more fully participate in today’s digital economy and to contribute their voices to shape the information spaces they value, whether in health, education, government, or science.

Over 50 million blind people worldwide lack equal access to information due to insufficient tools for making information digitally accessible. While text-to-speech software and audiobooks are cheap and readily available, they are not a substitute for braille and tactile graphics that use raised dots and lines to deliver access to things like text, maps, and graphs via touch.

However, most forms of braille and tactile graphics are only available in hardcopy form and are bulky and expensive. For example, the Harry Potter book series in braille costs over $1000, takes up an entire bookshelf, and weighs over 100 pounds. Hardcopy materials just do not provide the immediacy of access to information needed to participate in the modern digital world. 

While small refreshable braille displays are available, like the one pictured above, their tactile “screens” are only big enough to display one line of text, or roughly five to ten words at a time. They do not come close to delivering the same kind of access to information as braille books and tactile graphics. As information becomes increasingly digital, blind people are stuck with hardcopy content and are therefore not being afforded equal access to information as their sighted counterparts.

NewHaptics is developing a tablet device for the blind that enables real-time digital access to the critically important forms of tactile information that have until now only been available in hardcopy formats. Our product has a large tactile “screen” with a grid of thousands of tiny dots that raise and lower to bring multiple lines of braille text and tactile graphics to life on the tablet’s surface. With its uniquely large tactile “screen” and custom software interface, our product will deliver simple and easy access to information, including websites, emails, documents and more. Its touch-sensing surface will also enable real-time access and editing of text and spatial information, creating an immediacy of access to information for blind people never before available in a commercial product.

The unparalleled size, capability, and cost of our tablet device stems from our patented pneumatic microchip technology. Unlike the technology used in existing braille displays, our technology can easily scale up to support a large tactile screen with touch-sensing. Like pixels on a computer screen, tactile dots can be raised and lowered to render braille and tactile graphics in real time on the device's surface. 

Our solution is a digital tool that will enable equal access to information for blind people around the world, empowering them with the knowledge and skills necessary to more fully participate in modern digital classrooms, workplaces, and societies. And through their broader inclusion, blind people will not only achieve a greater sense of independence and well-being, they will also enrich the communities in which they live with their unique skill sets and lived experiences.

For sighted people, advances in information access have gone hand in hand with advances in technology. Touchscreens have literally placed information at one’s fingertips. For blind people, information access has been constrained by assistive technologies that only support small amounts of text. The rich spatial information in math and music codes, maps, graphs, and other media cannot currently be accommodated in digital (refreshable) forms. Our solution will finally place these rich forms of information at the fingertips of blind people and provide the tools that are now necessary for inclusion in the modern digital world.

Prior to forming NewHaptics, members of our founding team took part in National Science Foundation’s I-Corps customer discovery program. Over the course of a couple of months, we traveled all around the U.S. and spoke with hundreds of blind people and stakeholders in the assistive technology space. Our conversations led to many lasting relationships and partnerships that we maintain today, most notably with the National Braille Press (the leading distributor of braille textbooks and materials in the U.S.) and the California School for the Blind (one of the largest schools for the blind in the U.S.). We regularly engage with these key partners and we are excited to be meeting with them again in-person to gather feedback on prototypes as restrictions surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic continue to loosen. 

In speaking with blind people and other key stakeholders in the assistive technology space, we know that our solution will make an immediate impact on the opportunities available to blind people in education, the workplace, and their personal lives by closing the digital divide in accessibility to information and media. Our product will provide a bridge to participation in a world that increasingly depends on digital literacy, far beyond what current single-line refreshable braille displays can deliver. The increased access to braille and tactile information enabled by our product will spur an increase in braille literacy among blind people, and thereby improve their educational and employment outcomes, and ultimately their independence and well-being. Through all of our conversations with blind people and their educators, we found this: to manage their disability, blind people tend to develop a unique problem-solver mindset and fortitude that makes them natural life-hackers and inventors. With our product in their hands, there is no telling what they will accomplish and the benefit they will bring to the rest of society.

Access to digital information is fundamental to inclusion in the modern world. Without effective tools for digital accessibility, blind people around the world are missing out—on education, employment, and a fulfilling life. Our mission is to close the digital divide for blind people by building a product that enables true digital access to information via touch.

With our product, blind people will finally be able to access and interact with information and more fully participate in today’s digital economy. And through their participation, blind people will be empowered to contribute their voices to shape the spaces in which they live.

Our development efforts have recently led to the creation of a series of prototype devices, one of which is pictured above. We have thoroughly tested our approach to controlling the tactile dots and have proven their reliability and scalability with benchtop testing. We are now integrating auxiliary technologies, e.g., touchscreen, input keys, and embedded hardware and software, and optimizing for manufacturability and design to achieve a portable device that meets the needs of blind users. 

Productization efforts are supported through partnerships with microchip manufacturers that will provide resources for scale-up and key stakeholders in the assistive technology space that will help us gather product feedback. We are currently leveraging close ties with the California School for the Blind and National Braille Press to get feedback on prototypes from blind users, teachers of the visually impaired, and tactile content creators.

Our innovation solves major hurdles related to size and cost of tactile dots that have prevented the success of previous attempts at creating a large-area tactile tablet device. The advantages of our approach stem from the form, function, and cost-point of our patented pneumatic microchip technology. 

Form. Unlike the core technology underlying existing single-line braille displays, our patented microchip technology easily scales up to a large-area “screen” that can support digital versions of multiline braille and tactile graphics. 

Function. While digital audio and text-to-speech tools are inexpensive and readily available, they do not function as a substitute for written braille text and tactile graphics, especially for critical tasks in education and the workplace like editing, studying, scanning and marking-up. Our product’s large-area tactile “screen” supports digital access to these critical forms of tactile information that have until now only been available in hardcopy form. 

Cost-Point. Unlike the competition, we are able to achieve a commercially viable cost-point, with an initial target sale price of $1000. Current refreshable braille displays with small screens that only support a single line of braille cost upwards of $5000. Previous attempts to make products with larger screens have failed due to estimated product prices exceeding $15,000. Using our novel approach, hundreds of dots are manufactured in a single low-cost chip in a process similar to how computer chips are made, making a low-cost large-screen device possible.

With our tactile tablet at their fingertips, blind people will finally have true digital access to information.

We are currently serving 0 people.

In one year, we will be serving over 100 people, including a small set of blind students and their teachers, as we pilot our prototype devices in a select group of school districts in the United States.

In five years, we will be serving hundreds of thousands of people around the world. Our products will have touched the hands of 10,000+ blind people, many of them students. In addition, teachers and parents of blind students, employers of blind people, peers and co-workers, and colleges and universities around the world will feel the impact as the awesome potential of this community is fully realized. Tactile content creators around the world will also be using our software tools to deliver content to students via our products, sparking a vibrant content ecosystem. In the following years, we will seek to serve the millions of blind people around the world by generating a resurgent interest in braille, broadening access, and increasing awareness.

Our progress upon launch will be measured at the macro level by the braille literacy rate. Our hope is that our device will spur greater adoption of braille among the blind community, particularly in schools, and meaningfully grow the braille literacy rates. This falls within the UN goal of ensuring an inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning and learning opportunities for all.

When equipped with braille, students have a much richer educational experience and have greater opportunities in higher education and employment. NewHaptics has developed its device so that it provides the closest alternative to the sighted learning experience, helping to bridge the accessibility gap. This will be measured by academic success and improvements in blind student performance.

Further down the road, measures of impact will include employment outcomes, which are closely linked to braille literacy within the blind community.

We currently have one full-time (Alex Russomanno, CEO) and two part-time (Sile O’Modhrain, CIO and Brent Gillespie, CTO) staff. We also have three contractors, two of whom contribute to the engineering development and the other to finance and commercialization strategy. 

Dr. Alex Russomanno heads the team as the business and technical lead. Alex did his PhD in mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan during which he researched and developed NewHaptics’s core technology. Following his graduation, Alex was awarded a grant by the National Science Foundation to lead an extensive customer discovery process during which he spoke with hundreds of blind people and stakeholders in the assistive technology space in the U.S. His unique combination of a knowledge of the company’s core technology and the people NewHaptics’s is hoping to serve is fundamental to the company's future success.

Dr. Sile O’Modhrain is a blind professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Information with over 25 years of experience researching in the fields of human computer interaction and haptics. As a visually impaired person herself, Sile brings a lifetime of experience in reading braille and tactile graphics. Her skills as a designer and researcher, combined with her own experience, have placed her in a unique position to contribute to the development of NewHaptics’s product.

Dr. Gillespie is a Professor at the University of Michigan with almost 30 years of experience as a researcher in the field of haptics. As employee number two at Immersion Corporation, one of the most successful companies in the area of haptic interface design, Dr. Gillespie also has first-hand experience bringing haptic technologies to market. 

NewHaptics’s founding team is well-positioned to implement our novel technical approach in a commercial product for the blind.

NewHaptics is an organization devoted to pursuing equity and inclusion within education and the digital world, and in doing so welcoming diverse and traditionally unheard voices to these communities. These aims are reflected in the Company’s team, which includes members with a diversity of experiences and abilities, including a member of the underserved blind community. Perhaps more importantly these aims guide the Company’s actions, ensuring the focus remains on delivering the best and most achievable solution to the blind community so that equity in access to information can be improved.

After spinning out of the University of Michigan in 2019, we have been operating as a company without significant mentorship or access to a strong network of leaders and experts. While we have had great success in landing non-dilutive funding from government grants (National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation) to de-risk our technology, we are now in need of access to better business and commercialization resources to succeed. 

We are applying to become a Solver to take advantage of the powerful network of leaders available through MIT. We are particularly interested in having access to mentorship and strategic advice from experts and expanding our network. We have recently proven our technology with small-scale prototypes and will be focused on scaling it up to full size. We will be working closely with blind people and educators throughout the U.S. to get feedback and continuously iterate on our product. We believe support from MIT networks will be particularly useful in this area, not only in helping us solidify our strategy, but in connecting with partner organizations and the network of people at MIT and the greater Boston area. Through customer discovery efforts, one of our main takeaways was that the blind community is tight-knit and highly self-referencing. We believe that with MIT's help, we can further strengthen our engagement with the blind community and lay the groundwork for a successful product launch.

Business Model: Our current business model is based on extensive customer discovery efforts and market research, but we fully understand that as we begin to make direct contact with customers with our planned pilot program, we will be constantly updating our approach. We are seeking experts and mentors at MIT to help us update our business model as we learn from trying to bring our first product to market.

Financial: As a hardware company, we will likely need to raise capital to fund our development and manufacturing costs. We are seeking advice on pitching to investors and positioning our company for success in getting the funding we need to make our product a reality.

Public Relations: Our team is currently very engineering heavy and we will be looking to bring on new members to help in branding/marketing strategy. We are seeking advice on how and when to bring on key members of the team.

We are interested in partnering with any MIT faculty and affiliates and Solve Members with experience in assistive technology and accessibility and in bringing a product to market in the education space. We believe people with experience in assistive technology or accessibility will help us to define and measure our impact and thereby refine our business model. We recognize that bringing a product to market in the education space can be challenging and are looking to get advice from others who have experience in that realm. 

We are also particularly interested in partnering with organizations in the greater Boston area with strong connections to the blind community, including the Perkins School for the Blind, the Carroll Center for the Blind, National Federation of the Blind of Massachusetts, and the National Braille Press. We believe partnerships with these organizations will help us keep end users at the center of our product development, ensuring that our product meets their needs. 

For blind students in today’s increasingly digital classroom, access to tactile braille and graphical content (e.g. graphs, maps, charts) in an electronic form is essential for literacy and proficiency in science and other math-related subjects. A low-cost technology that enables digital access to tactile information is currently not available. As a result, blind students currently rely on hard-copy materials, which are expensive and time-consuming to manufacture and deliver. Although school systems work to ensure blind students have their class materials and textbooks in tactile form,
last-minute changes in curriculum or the introduction of new worksheets and reading assignments often leave students without the materials they need. 

Our solution is a first-of-its-kind tactile tablet device that would ensure equitable access to educational materials for blind students. Our tablet device is a digital display that easily converts and delivers necessary tactile content, including braille and graphical content, directly to blind students where and when they need it, helping to remove accessibility barriers in education. Improved access to braille and tactile graphics in education through the availability of our tactile tablet device will lead to increased braille literacy, opportunities in higher education, particularly in STEM fields, and ultimately employment success and independence for people who are blind.

Over 50 million people worldwide who are blind do not have sufficient access to information and media. Yet blind people work and compete throughout and up to the highest levels of society while overcoming digital access bottlenecks imposed by the constraints of technology, primarily by relying on long­-term and working memory, high-­level analysis skills, and patience. While helpful, current assistive technologies, including single line braille displays and text-to-speech software, are gravely inadequate for meeting the demands of an ever-­increasingly digital world. Furthermore, blind people lack access to online information pertaining to news and current affairs [5], and pertaining to the management of health and personal finances [6]. 

Our product will provide a bridge to inclusion in communities around the world that now depend on a level of digital literacy far beyond what current assistive technology devices can offer. Digital literacy is a key skill in today’s digital environment, a skill that is now introduced even in elementary school. To enter the job market today, one must be well­-versed not only in reading maps, graphs and charts, but also in creating and manipulating data representations. Blind people are at a disadvantage when they have such limited means of digital access. By placing our interactive tactile display in the hands of blind people, they will have the tools they need to overcome the digital inequities that exist in today's world.