Home>Service> Awardees of Fervent Global Love of Lives Award> 22nd Fervent Global Love of Lives Award 2019> Savior of Visually Impaired - Kristina Tsvetanova
Savior of Visually Impaired - Kristina Tsvetanova
[Showing women’s new creativity by helping blind people learn]
 
Blind people should not be excluded from an increasingly digital world, but the current technology on the market cannot be seen and accessed by blind people. Only the love of information technology can change the way hundreds of millions of blind people can know about the world.
 
—Kristina Tsvetanova
Heartfelt feeling for the blind people
Many successful entrepreneurs have a touching story behind them. In Austria, the female entrepreneur from Bulgaria, Kristina Tsvetanova, seeing that the world is unfriendly for the blind, decided to invest in innovative technology to combine software and hardware, thus started her painful journey of social entrepreneurship.

This life story started when Kristina went to the Technical University of Sofia in Bulgaria. A blind student asked her to help sign up for the online course. Subsequently, the blind student suffered from no relevant information tools to help her finish her studies. Kristina realized that the current Internet information is designed for people who can “see.” For those who have vision impairment and for the blind people, the trend of digitalization has inversely become a new challenge for them.

One hundred ninety years ago, a Frenchman gave the blind people a way to see the world through their fingers. Louis Braille was the inventor of alphabets for the blind. Since then, Braille is the only primary tool for more than 150 million blind and visually impaired people.

Despite the rapid advancement of technology, it is still impossible for humans to use the popular touch screen. Until four years ago, this dilemma was rewritten by a 29-year-old young woman, Kristina Tsvetanova.

Liquid-based actuating technology gives new lives to the blind
Using the revolutionary “liquid-based actuating technology,” she invented a tactile tablet that can be used by the blind and visually impaired people, thus changing the existing 285 million blind people worldwide (the World Health Organization predicts that the number of blind people will double to 520 million in 2020) to find a way to know about the world.

She received the EU Prize for Women Innovators, and later, awarded the 2018 Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards.

Whereby, Kristina Tsvetanova, a heartfelt person who wishes the blind people to learn, led a group of people who are willing to devote themselves to R&D, started from scratch to overcome the lack of funds, materials, tools, and other entrepreneurial environments. Finally, the team designed a brand new affordable tablet computer after 10 years. It allows blind people around the world to access the Internet and read e-books more conveniently, change the way that blind people “see,” and show women’s new creativity. She deserves to be praised as a “Savior of Visually Impaired,” and stood out among 2,723 recommended candidates from all over the world and earned her the “22nd Fervent Global Love of Lives Award 2019” from Taiwan’s Chou Ta-Kuan Cultural and Educational Foundation.

The Foundation welcomes all walks of life around the world at any time to recommend candidates of life warriors who possess the contexts of endeavors, love, braveness, and achievement.
 
The Fervent Global Love of Lives Medal - Chou Ta-Kuan Cultural and Educational Foundation, Taiwan
Recommended hotline: 886-2-29178770
Fax: 886-2-29178768
Address: 3F, No. 52, Mingde Road, Xindien District, New Taipei City 231, Taiwan
Website: http://www.ta.org.tw
Email: ta88ms17@gmail.com

Love without borders
Kristina, from Bulgaria, a country on the Balkans in southeastern Europe, is bordered by Romania, Serbia, Northern Macedonia, Greece, Turkey, and the Black Sea in the east. It had once ruled by the Alexander Empire, the Roman Empire, and the Ottoman Empire. In 1878, with support from the Russian Empire, it was independent of the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) and joined the European Union in 2005. 

Kristina attended the University of Sofia, the highest learning institution in Bulgaria. Founded in 1888, it is one of the oldest high-level education institutions in Europe. As the new institution of the new socialist era, it has become a large-scale integrated teaching and research center in Eastern Europe that teaches social and natural science research and improves the professional level of various experts.

Grew up in a new socialist atmosphere, Kristina has realized her leap from fantasy to science,  thrusting science to shine with the radiance of rationality and the light of personality, adhering to the entrepreneurial model of solving social problems with social enterprises, and using the great love of information technology to help the blind people around the world.

Opens up a new world for more than 500 million blind people around the globe
As the first and only female student to receive a degree in industrial engineering from the University of Sofia, Bulgaria, Kristina said that the beginning of the invention was purely accidental. She was inspired by a sight-impaired university friend while studying the engineering course at the University of Sofia. She noticed how difficult it was for her friend to follow an online course and decided to help the blind people head on.

That incident also made Kristina realize that blind people can’t see, and the technology on the market today is merely unreachable for the blind people.

At that time, the heartfelt Kristina had determined to design a world’s first tactile tablet known as “BLITAB” for the visually impaired people.

Books can be read on the tactile screen. For the first time, users can choose to listen to them or click on the full text with their fingers. The innovative user interface can be directly converted into any text content, whether from a USB memory card or a web page, photos and charts. For the first time, these can be displayed on the tactile surface, thus opening up a whole new world of contents for blind users.

There are currently more than 285 million blind people in the world. The WHO predicts that this number will double by 2020, but only 1% of published books have Braille v
ersion, and the only electronic keyboard device available to the blind can only present five words at a time. It is not only slow but also costly, at about US$5,000 each.

The “BLITAB” designed and developed by the Kristina team can convert the content text into small dots (tixels), which will rise from the touch screen and provide the visually impaired to “read” with the fingers, or converted into a voice listening mode. The price is only $500.

To develop this visually impaired touch panel, Kristina specially formed a company. Although all members have a solid industrial engineering background, they were the first to participate in the establishment of a new startup. Everything started from zero, and they were lack of everything, funds, materials, tools, etc. Only by condensing the love of everyone would they able to move step by step, and become more and more courageous to dash ahead.

Kristina is very grateful. Although the EU Prize for Women Innovators and the Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards have let her gain international exposure, to put ideal into practice, the most important thing is that it requires a lot of money to turn the design prototype into popularity among the visually impaired people.

Kristina said that entrepreneurship is not as terrible as it is. After winning various awards and becoming an innovation consultant for G7, she is more convinced that gender equality and female entrepreneurs can play a more groundbreaking role on the world stage. 

Braille is about to disappear from the blind world
When it comes to learning, most people may have difficulty understanding the plight of visually impaired people.

For the student groups, students with amblyopia and blindness often need auxiliary equipment to help, but the printing cost of Braille is rather expensive. Only about 1% of books in the world are made into the Braille version.

Also, Braille typewriter is bulky and expensive. So traditional hardware resources are difficult to be expanded into Braille literacy rate, and some even think that “Braille” is about to disappear from the blind world.

Kristina saw the inconvenience of the blind people in learning, and always wanted to go all out to design a cheap tablet for the blind.

In the face of this dilemma, one of the solutions is to develop towards “voice communication,” which is the combination of the currently used audio-visual reading software, audio-spotting document editor, Braille display board, and notebook computers, and scanners for the blind.

In some advanced countries such as Japan and the United States, some information media such as Reader’s Digests, and even the recorded magazines use “sound” to convey the contents.

However, the “sound version” of these media is only a minority, and the coverage is narrow. Apart from the news, there are few subjects related to education (such as literature, science, skills), and it is impossible to provide stereoscopic or spatial imagination.

Kristina is outraged of such situation everywhere in the world: “Blind people should not be excluded from an increasingly digital world.”

There will be 500 million people with vision loss or blindness in the world. Their IQ and ability are not as bad as the average person, but they are isolated and marginalized in their learning resources.

Seeing this, Kristina, who has nine years of hands-on experience in engineering, has determined to invent a tablet for the blind, allowing them to browse the web and read books as they wish.

Breakthrough touch technology
When the idea is transformed into action, “technology” has become the primary development goal.

Today, as touch-screen is dominating almost all mobile devices, so BLITAB Technology GmbH, a startup company founded by Kristina, focuses on developing a suitable touch technology for the blind.

The team spent more than five years developing the product (known as BLITAB), which looks like an e-book reader. It appears to have a screen and a keyboard. However, this is not a traditional flat-panel LCD screen, but a stereoscopic screen that can change dynamically.

Regarding this unique technology, Kristina said in an interview with the media company Fastcompany: “We call this material as “tixels,” which is the abbreviation of “tactile pixels.” It is characterized by the fact that it does not rely on any mechanical means to initiate the character changes during operation. 

However, BLITAB’s patent is still under review. Kristina is unable to disclose more details, but the more specific explanation is that the screen structure contains “Smart Liquid,” composing of 1,200 small bubbles which will rise and fall to reveal protruding points on the screen following the user’s instructions.

The difference between BLITAB and today’s technology is that the Braille typewriter on the market is designed according to the mechanical principle. The changing of the protruding dots on the screen relies on the keyboard. While operating, the round protrusions will rise or descend from the holes, forming “dot” words for the blind person to touch. As each component must occupy a specific volume, so the size of the traditional Braille board is huge and expensive, and the screen can only display one line at a time.

In contrast, the BLITAB screen can display 13 to 15 lines of text at a time. It is compact, portable, and versatile. The screen can also display simple images, maps, and even topographic features. Together with the GPS, it can provide a navigation function for the visually impaired people.

When BLITAB is in operation, you can choose to plug in external devices such as USB, memory card, NFC tag (can read and write smart tags), and proximity Bluetooth transmission or web page. The device can support PDF, DOCx, and TXT files. Once the built-in software recognizes the text, it will be converted into Braille letters, and the undulating screen caused by small liquid bubble changes will allow the blind person to touch and read the content.

The product also has an “input” function. There is a Perkins Style Braille Keyboard under the screen. It contains six keys for Braille, a space key, a return key, and an underline key to allow users to “find information and take notes.”

Makes the world different
In fact, not only has BLITAB Technology invested in R&D on the concept of “Action Reader for Blind,” but the EU has also invested in Anagraph product developed by Pera Technology Co., a Braille-based device with a “wax” screen. Its core technology of which is “Thermo-hydraulic micro-actuation.” When the software interprets the text, it uses the resistance heat to turn the wax sheet from the liquid phase into a solid phase, thus generating an undulating surface caused by the expansion characteristics to present 6,000 different combinations of Braille words. Unfortunately, Anagraph has not yet developed a prototype that matches the market and has already used up 1.5 million euros of funds. So the current development is temporarily suspended. 

However, the biggest threat to BLITAB product in the market is actually the giant beast from the mobile device - Apple. Previously, the iPhone and iPad products already have VoiceOver, a voice system that is easy for the visually impaired to operate. It is a gesture-based screen reader that can be clicked on the main screen button, whether it is an App or Caller ID, power status, etc., to be conveyed by sound to assist the user in manipulating and can also adjust the reading speed and tone according to the user’s preferences.

In addition to the voice function, Apple has also integrated with the blind navigation system BlindSquare, so whether it is an iPhone or an iPad, it can remind the user of the surrounding environment by voice and give directions. For example, there is a walkway in front, a toilet on the left, and other information.

In 2018, Apple’s VoiceOver software (which costs more than $23,000) had received the Helen Keller Achievement Award Recipients from the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB), to become the first technology company in the world to receive this award.

The success of Apple has naturally brought pressure to BLITAB, but the advantage of BLITAB is that the information is conveyed by touch rather than sound. This provides users with more privacy and allows them to perform input and output functions conveniently. Therefore, what the product needs to break through are price and market acceptance.

Today, BLITAB has won 11 innovation awards in the international arena, and their enthusiasm for leading “science and technology” to “social innovation” has also attracted the attention of many organizations, including the Vienna Commercial Agency to take the lead in funding. The Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB), and Barclays Bank have also expressed high interest in it.

BLITAB Technology released its product in September 2016 (this model is priced at US$500), and it is still working hard to raise funds, and recruiting respondents and collecting their experience in 34 countries.

So far, the feedback from the respondents includes: “Incredible! This invention can make more blind people learn.” “This device has helped my son tremendously. Thank you.” Such praises are continuing to pour in. It seems that technology can really change society, and the enthusiasm and determination of the BLITAB team led by Kristina can indeed change the world!