Many blind people are not eligible to access massive content available on the world like others due to those contents are needed to translate to braille language while the braille embosser is pricey and very difficult to afford.

With the intention to make change happen to more than 285 million blind people worldwide by giving them opportunity, quality and equality of living like normal people, Touchable Ink will give them full ability to read and unlock their potential by just using the ordinary printers so they can afford.

Instead of investing on designing the complicated new printer, we put our effort to focus on turning the normal laser printer to be braille printer and make the blind people be able to print braille documents by themselves and read at home with no limitation. Touchable Ink, the world-first printing ink invented exclusively for blind people is the real game changer.

We add the embossing powder into the ink cartridge. This ink will make chemical reaction with heat and finally puff out on paper.

The major components of the touchable Ink are the laser printer toner and extra fine embossing powder that has been compressed to the same particle size as toner through the chemical process. The ink itself will be fused with heat and created the raised surface similar to raised embossing on paper made with pressure and an embossing tool.

Users simply replace the toner, print out and heat it.

Currently, we are at the beginning of the developing process with 1st prototype stage to test for further adjustment.

There are 2 types of home-based printer; ink jet (liquid ink) and laser (toner). As R&D and testing, the developing team found that laser printer is suitable and affordable (laser printer is available from just USD60). We started developing the special ink that can emboss through chemical process and keep testing for the best formula that works well with normal printer.

The main factor to create the ink is embossing powder, fine powder made from plastic resins, which helps generate the embossed effect when heated. The rest is confidential during the process of patent registration. To make this work,the toner element needs to be replaced with embossing powder. The key technique is to reduce the size of embossing powder particle to be as same as the toner which are 1/20 of hair dimension. The special additives will be added to catalyze the electric charge and increase a better raising effect.

This is the beginning of the journey to create real and meaningful social impact in order to change lives of more than 285 visually impaired people around the world to be able to live life equally like ordinary people with the ability to read by themselves. This can be happened thanks to the affordable printer equipped by Touchable Ink. With this ability, we do believe that it will increase endless opportunity for them to learn the world and empower them to create the world on their own with their imagination.

Nowadays, many different kinds of technology have been innovated to help blind people to visualize the world, from mobile app, virtual pencil, watch to glasses. However, these technologies have limitation to provide simple requirement they truly want – to be able to read by themselves with their fingers. Only basic device that allow them to do is the ‘braille embosser’ and print on special paper to produce Braille text based document but it’s incredibly expensive and limited to access. Therefore, is there any possibility to commoditize the braille embosser so the blind people can simply afford and access to?