A Printer for Blind People Braille printers can print braille words from text files. The braille graphics cannot be printed from standard computer graphics applications. Braille printer manufacturers and a few other organizations provide some limited software that permit a few types of line graphics to be constructed. Black dots and lines copied on this paper swell when the paper is heated in a radiant heater. With patience one can obtain reasonably good quality tactile graphic materials, but the cost per page is high, and few people have mastered the art of making good quality images.
Blind people have great difficulty in making swell paper materials without sighted assistance.
The tactile graphics embosser invented by SAP researcher Peter Langner, currently being devloped by the OSU licensee ViewPlus Technologies, Inc , is an embosser intended for use with standard inexpensive braille paper. It prints line and block graphics from common Windows applications and substitutes DotsPlus tactile font characters for the screen fonts. A user printing only standard characters can choose optionally any one of several braille substitutions instead. The printer can emulate a braille printer in standard braille text applications. This printer should make it possible for any sighted computer user to print out good tactile hard copy scientific information including math, graphs, and diagrams.