In what could potentially be a life-changing breakthrough for visually-impaired individuals the world over, veteran advertising agency J. Walter Thompson (JWT) Thailand has recently unveiled their Touchable Ink project, a CSR initiative to develop a special kind of ink that -- when exposed to appropriate levels of heat -- will rise up from the page, allowing conventional, household printers to replace expensive dedicated Braille printers.
Developed in conjunction with Thammasat University's Faculty of Science and Technology with support from Samsung, the Touchable Ink project is the latest effort in JWT's continued mission to develop innovative solutions to the problems facing our society, according to chief creative officer Satit Jantawiwat.
"We're always keeping an eye on the issues facing society, both domestic and international," said Satit. "And contemplate the things we can do to alleviate or even solve the problem. It's like a little homework assignment for all our employees."
The science behind the ink is actually rather simple, involving the addition of embossing powder -- a cheap, commonly-sold material -- into a regular printer ink cartridge. Users can then print out any document or picture as they would normally, before applying heat to the ink to make it swell up from the page. According to Satit, the heat produced by household products like hairdryers, clothing irons or microwaves will do just fine.
"We wanted to create an affordable alternative for blind people to get access to Braille," he said.
"Our goal is to design an ink that can be used with any type of printer you may have at home, no matter the price or brand. We decided to work on the ink instead of creating a new type of printer, as we wanted to make this technology affordable for everyone."
While still currently under development, Satit believes that the Touchable Ink technology will be able to negate the most glaring issues facing traiditional Braille printing, namely those of cost and time.
According to Satit, Braille printers are exorbitantly expensive -- and rare -- here in Thailand, with the cheapest models costing tens of thousands of baht. There are only a few hundred printers scattered around the country today, and even if a blind person is fortunate enough to have access to one of these printers, the process of printing even a single page of Braille can be an extremely expensive and time-consuming affair.
"The scarcity of Braille printers available for public use combined with the issues of cost and time have created a bottleneck situation, where Braille books can't be manufactured quickly enough to meet the demands of people," he said.
"Right now, Thailand only has the capacity to print several hundred Braille books per year. This means that even the libraries offered by the Association of the Blind tend to hold very few books, and even those they do have tend to be on a long waiting list."
Suthat Pungsiripattana, vice-president of Thailand's Association of the Blind (TAB), also added that conventional Braille printers require a special type of thick paper that can only be found by importing them for 20 to 30 baht per sheet, with the paper's thickness turning even the smallest pocketbooks into multiple unwieldy volumes of Braille code. Furthermore, the thickness of the paper combined with the sharpness of the tactile dots that form each Braille code letter can cause irritation for the people reading them over extended periods of time.
"Once this Touchable Ink becomes commercially available, we will be able to get rid of these problems entirely," said Suthat. In order to modify the ink mixture to produce the best results, JWT has also been collaborating with the schools under the TAB's wing in providing them with samples of Braille documents as well as diagrams and maps printed with their special ink to be tested in their classrooms.
"We tested our ink for several different factors, such as the thickness of the swelling or the ink's adherence to the paper," explained Parattajariya Jalayanateja, managing director of JWT.
"The ideal threshold for the thickness is about 0.1mm. While the ink has proven to have no problems sticking to the paper, at it's current stage, the results of using the ink in conventional printers aren't quite consistent enough yet. It still takes us about seven to eight tries to get a perfect copy."
Parattajariya emphasised that the ink is very much still in development, and can still take several months of work before it reaches a stage in which it can be sold on the market. But once it does make it's way into the households of blind people, both Suthat and the JWT executives believe that this technology will truly improve the quality of life of visually impaired people, and will be a significant step towards bridging the gap in educational opportunities between them and visually healthy people as well.
"In future, blind people will be able to have the same level of access to books and information as regular people, and at the same cost," said Parattajariya.
"Before, subjects that rely heavily on visual diagrams like geometry have been all but impossible for blind people to fully grasp," added Satit. "But the ability to print out diagrams for them to feel with their fingers can help bridge this gap in access to education as well. We printed out outlines of countries and dinosaurs for the children at the trial schools, and they were all very well received."
"Our hope is to let everyone know that just because you're blind doesn't mean that your future is blind as well," said Parattajariya.
The ink can also be printed out and stuck to bottles and boxes as well.
Students from the School for the Blind test-reading a document printed in Touchable Ink.
From left, Suthat Pungsiripattana, Parattajariya Jalayanateja and Satit Jantawiwat.
