[BRLTTY] Technological developments in braille displays

[Jan and Bertil Smark Nilsson]

Greetings,

For twenty years I was involved in development projects aimed at producing 
a cheap and reliable braille display and, so far, I don't know of any 
technology that's equal to or better than the piezzoelectric concept. 
Unfortunately, braille displays are expensive. I find it disgraceful that 
those of us who don't live in the U.S. often have to pay more for our 
braille displays. Just to mention one example, the Braille Voyager 44 
costs USD$3495 in the US and and GBP£3460 (USD$6020 at the current 
exchange rate) in the UK.

I agree with Jason that there is not much more to do with regard to 
functionality. I've been using Alva displays for the last thirteen years 
and found them both functional and reliable. The new model, A4 Glider, 
looks promising with bluetooth, USB and serial ports, not to mention the 
battery life, which is said to be 100 hours. But there again, it's much 
more expensive than the Voyager.

As far as multi-line displays are concerned, I'm not interested. I can't 
see any advantage which would outweigh the disadvantage of the bulk of 
such a device.

Bertil Smark Nilsson