12-Year-Old Invents Braille Printer

07/03/2014

12-Year-Old Invents Braille Printer

When we talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary.
Fred Rogers

Shubham Banerjee, a 12-year-old from California, has invented, a low-cost Braille printer to help the visually impaired — using Legos. The Better India website reported that...

"It all started when a flyer asking for donations for the visually impaired landed on the Banerjee family’s doorsteps. Shubham started thinking about the difficulties faced by visually impaired people, and a little bit of Google-ing revealed that a Braille printer costs a whopping $2000. Banerjee was surprised and thought to do something about it. Being a Lego lover since childhood, he came up with an idea to put his toys to a better use. A month of mix and match and experiments, and he managed to design a Braille printer with the help of his $350 toy set. Banerjee proudly named this invention as 'Braigo' which is a mash up of Braille and Lego.

“'Over 200 million people in the world are blind and 90 percent of them are living in developing countries. And, a lot of people can’t afford the costly machines available in the market. So, can’t we do something about the cost?' Banerjee says. The little genius wants to help the less privileged through his invention rather than making cash out of it. He wants it to be open source so that others can also learn and make their own devices at a very low cost. He has started putting videos and instructions online on YouTube and Facebook page."

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