Remember The Intel-backed Teen With A Braille Printer? Here’s His Latest

Shubham Banerjee was perhaps the youngest inventor to get venture funding when Intel Capital invested two years ago in an inexpensive braille printer he originally made out of Legos as a 12-year-old.

The Santa Clara teen entrepreneur’s company, Braigo Labs, on Thursday unveiled his latest innovation aimed at helping the visually impaired.

It’s designed to solve the problem that visually impaired people can have reading text that gets printed on top of images.

Palo Alto-based Braigo rolled out the beta version of an online platform that can extract text from images that appear in a number of different ways, whether on the Web, a smartphone, in complex documents or on a billboard.

The platform can be used to upload content, access previously uploaded content, subscribe and view news feeds, or to browse from Braigo’s public library. It’s available in over 50 languages.

A number of companies have been offering technology to help the visually impaired, including LookTel’s Money Reader which helps to identify the value of currency, TapTapSee which identifies objects and Be My Eyes — a crowdsourced app that uses able-visioned people to help blind people see.

Braigo’s platform lets users upload documents or pictures to read or print in braille.

“This is our step towards the right direction,” Banerjee said in a blog.“We are looking at Braigo as a whole product that creates, supports and expands an ecosystem for the visually impaired. Not simply as a standalone software or hardware tool.”

The company hasn’t released the original braille printer yet. The goal was to have it available for sale at about $500, a big price reduction from the $2,000 that they cost otherwise. The company said it is in the final stages of development but a launch date for the printer hasn’t been set.

Source: Silicon Valley Business Journal, Cromwell Schubarth
Photo: Braigo Labs on Thursday unveiled the latest innovation by Shubham Banerjee, the Intel-backed teen entrepreneur from Santa Clara, aimed at helping the visually impaired.

Cromwell Schubarth is TechFlash Editor at the Silicon Valley Business Journal.