According to Brooklyn-based ELIA Life Technology, less than one percent of visually-impaired people can read braille. It’s notoriously difficult to master, with users reportedly taking up to 10 months to learn the alphabet. The company’s new ELIA Frames system, however, can apparently be learned in just three hours.
New font for the visually impaired people was introduced. This font may be the next generation answer to Braille. It is called as Elia. It is designed to make reading a more effective option for the visually impaired people.
ELIA Frames is actually a font consisting of raised characters that can be felt by the fingertips, each character representing an individual letter (or number) from the widely-used Roman alphabet. Surrounding every character is an outer “frame,” so users can easily tell where one character ends and the next begins.
CEO Andrew Chepaitis and his team worked for 20 years to develop it. Instead of dots from Braille, it has raised curved and straight lines. It mimics the alphabet more closely, making reading tasks easier.
ELIA is a simple, yet highly innovative new font that could change the way we think about braille. The tactile reading method is known as braille, almost 200 years old, has not had the impact which was intended at the time it was developed by Louis Braille in 1829. With the success of their current crowdfunding campaign, they are no doubt creating a product that will usher in a new era for the visually impaired.
