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Weekly News Digest
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April 2, 2020 — In addition to this week's NewsBreaks article and the monthly NewsLink Spotlight, Information Today, Inc. (ITI) offers Weekly News Digests that feature recent product news and company announcements. Watch for additional coverage to appear in the next print issue of Information Today. For other up-to-the-minute news, check out ITI’s Twitter account: @ITINewsBreaks.
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ACS Researchers Delve Into Better Braille Displays
The American Chemical Society (ACS) shared the following:Refreshable braille displays translate information from computer screens into raised characters, often along the bottom of a keyboard. But this technology can cost thousands of dollars and is limited, typically displaying a string of characters much shorter than most sentences. Researchers now report an improved material that could take these displays to the next level, allowing those who are blind or who have low vision to more easily understand text and images, while lowering cost. The researchers are presenting their results through the [ACS] SciMeetings online platform. ‘With more development, we think this new material’s properties could make it possible to create much higher resolution devices, perhaps even those capable of displaying information other than text, such as diagrams or maps,’ says Julia R. Greer, Ph.D., the project’s principal investigator. Braille displays currently on the market rely on the piezoelectric effect: A small crystal expands when voltage is applied to it, pushing a pin upward to create a dot. A single character, such as a letter, is encoded by up to eight such dots. Devices on the market typically display at most 80 characters at a time, or a fraction of a sentence or tweet. For more information, read the press release.
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Brandi Scardilli
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