[lynx23]

Assistive technology costs are high because consumers barely have an alternative. I am blind. In Europe, a 40-cell braille display starts a 6k. 6k, just for a monitor which displays 40 characters. Prices are largely unchanged since 20 years. Technological advancements are irrelevant. Resellers will squeeze the cow, thats plain capitalism man.

[pbasista]

If that is the case, then there seems to be a place in the market for someone else who can sell these devices for cheaper.

However, as you have pointed out, since it is also a market where people have few choices, there is no incentive for any new player to significantly lower the prices. Even if they easily could. Because they know that they will get the customers anyway.

That seems to be the root cause of the excessive price problem. An existing oligopoly of rent-seeking companies. Or a cartel, if you like.

I think that one of the ways to disturb this market and bring the prices down is for some honest company to join it and price their products fairly.

Once there is one such company, I assume that everyone else will lower their prices as well. Because otherwise they will run out of business.

[bluGill]

The problem is if you spend 100 million dollars to make one (which is about 30 engineers, 50 testers, and 20 other for a year) and sell 10,000 units (remember there is competition who will get come sales) you need $1000 each just to pay engineering costs. Lack of scale is what makes many products expensive.

[zestyping]

If you don't mind educating a curious person — why are Braille displays still worth making when text-to-speech is free, everywhere, and communicates information much more quickly than Braille? I can understand that there might be special situations where you really need a device to be silent, but it's hard for me to see how the cost-benefit tradeoff would weigh in favour of a Braille display except in the rarest of circumstances.

[mistercheph]

Just from googling -- an orbit reader 40-cell appears to cost $1,700 USD, is there a reason this doesn't actually solve the same problem as the 6,000 euro display, or are these not available in your market for that cost? Sorry if my question is off the mark, I don't know a lot about this and your comment piqued my curiosity.

[lynx23]

Orbit reader is the most low-quality device you can find on the market. This is like suggesting a bicycle to someone complaining about car prices.

[krisoft]

I’m sure the commenter meant well. You said “In Europe, a 40-cell braille display starts a 6k.” Which to me means that the most low quality, cheapest device starts at 6k.

Now i learn from you that that low quality device is so bad that you consider it a separate product class in itself. Can you tell us more what does it lack? In other words what features are you looking for when you are looking for a 40-cell brail display? (What is the minimum quality for it to be a “car” in your analogy?)

[K0balt]

This is a fascinating potential wedge for an open-source initiative. Could you please elaborate as to what makes a device highly usable and of good quality, vs cheap and unpleasant to use?

I’ve long thought that open source would make a lot of sense for assistive devices, and that it has the potential to change incentives within the cartel of assistive device manufacturing.

[ebalit]

There was a HackadayPrize 2023 competitor that worked on this [0]. He had to rethink the way those devices are built to bring the cost down.

That would be interesting to know if his solution could match the 4k$ in term of usability or if there is some issue like refreshing rate that make the piezo based system necessary for a good user experience.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXi1tG78AW4

[K0balt]

That looks like a great project. I share your curiousity regarding the user experience of this vs the piezo units. Looking at it, it should be in the 50-100mS range for refresh times, maybe that is too slow? It seems like it would be plenty fast? I wonder if there are other haptic factors with the piezo, like vibration?

[mistercheph]

This is specifically like someone that has never seen or used a car or bicycle asking about why a bicycle wouldn't work for someone complaining about car prices, which I think is a pretty reasonable question!