Category: Young Innovator
Project: dotFlow
Partners: Mohammad Alim and Nizar Abdelhannane
For millions of visually impaired individuals around the world, learning braille remains an immense challenge due to the high costs of educational tools.
The reality is stark: refreshable braille displays can cost thousands of pounds, making them inaccessible to most. This financial barrier has contributed to the alarmingly low braille literacy rate - only seven per cent among blind individuals, according to the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB).
Recognising this issue, Year 12 students Mohammad Alim and Nizar Abdelhannane from Featherstone Highschool in London set out to create an affordable, effective solution. Their invention, dotFlow, is a single-celled refreshable braille display designed to make the learning process more accessible and cost-efficient.
“A video I saw showed someone really happy to receive a braille book, and I wondered why that was,” said Mohammad. “When I researched the price of braille books online, I realised, yeah, they’re quite hefty, and it’s unaffordable for most.”
Traditional braille displays rely on piezoelectric crystals, but dotFlow employs an alternative design using linear solenoids. These solenoids provide a cost-effective and powerful mechanism for raising and lowering the braille dots. The use of an Arduino control system ensures that the device can process and translate digital text into braille efficiently.
“So we essentially used it on an Arduino,” said Mohammad. “It’s a piece of software and hardware. We coded up a long program that takes inputs from the user - a paragraph, words, a line, a sentence - and it goes letter by letter, outputting it as braille.”
“There is an alignment of six solenoids that trigger up and down to signal each letter or word,” added Nizar. “We use solenoids because we saw that servos didn’t technically work properly. There was an issue with the power input and output. The solenoids just made it more flexible.”
While commercial multi-cell braille displays are prohibitively expensive, dotFlow remains affordable. Mohammad estimates that if the device were mass-produced, it could cost as little as £100 to £200, compared to the thousands required for high-end solutions.
DotFlow was born out of the Maker Challenge at Imperial College London, a program that supports young London innovators in transforming their ideas into working prototypes.
Nizar said: “The challenge allows you to start from an idea and develop a working prototype over eight to nine weeks. We wanted to create a true change, not just something that looked cool. When we got the idea, we knew what we needed to do from the beginning.”
The program provided access to mentors who guided the team through the technical development process. From learning circuit theory and 3D modelling to troubleshooting complex problems, the experience was invaluable. “We worked alongside mentors and other students,” said Mohammad. “That gave us lots of different insights into the problem and potential solutions on how we could go about solving it.”
Working with Imperial College graduates and undergraduates further strengthened their skills. “If we ran into an issue, they could help us solve it and find a sustainable solution,” Nizar explained.
DotFlow was initially conceived as a basic learning tool, but the team quickly realised its potential for broader applications. They integrated an optical character recognition (OCR) feature that allows the device to scan text-based images and convert them into braille. This breakthrough makes it possible for users to interact with printed materials, significantly enhancing their learning experience.
“We saw that the device was working, it did what it needed to do,” said Nizar. “But we wanted to make it do more. We wanted to make it more useful to the target demographic. We added a feature where you could take a picture of any text in the world, and then it would read it and turn it into text that can be read on the device itself.”
The impact of dotFlow extends beyond the device itself - it has also helped shape the career aspirations of its creators. Both Mohammad and Nizar are planning futures in engineering, inspired by the hands-on experience gained through the Maker Challenge.
“I want to go into engineering, more specifically mechanical engineering,” said Nizar. “I want to learn more about fluids and mechatronics - just incorporating electronics into solving problems. In the future, I want to work in companies that develop technology for satellites and orbiting objects in space.”
Similarly, Mohammad is pursuing engineering. “I’m going to university next year, hopefully,” he said. “The first two years of my course will be general engineering, and then I can specialise in electrical and information engineering.”
The Maker Challenge also played a crucial role in shaping their perspectives on engineering.
“It’s the idea of working together,” said Mohammad. “Imagining all the possible engineering solutions, developing skills such as CAD programming, laser cutting, 3D printing, and really getting a detailed insight into what engineering really is and the impact it can have.”
Nizar added: “Problem-solving different challenges, creating the simplest solution possible for a complex problem just made it so intriguing. Each problem was in its own bubble - you just had to solve it. With every problem I solved, I just wanted to solve more.”
As it stands, dotFlow is a prototype and Mohammad stresses that is very much oriented towards learning Braille.
“As you’d imagine, in a single cell it’s pretty hard to read novels or books,” Mohammad said. “It’s very much as a starter guide to multi cellular, you can probably springboard into multi cell braille displays later. But it’s very much to learn braille initially, and then you would be able to read books and whatnot.”
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