Project Grant 1549009

This National Science Foundation Project Grant of $187,881 will support the development of tactile displays and related research at Chapman University from June 2022 through May 2024 under the Engineering (47.041) program. The university will integrate braille and graphics on a single platform using a small dynamic tactile grid. Researchers will characterize user acceptability of dynamic tactile systems calibrated for individual preferences. An initial 6x6 refreshable tactile grid adhering to...

This $274,999 National Science Foundation Project Grant under the Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships program aims to develop a wearable, computer vision-based, real-time Braille-to-speech learning device. Braillewear will receive funding to establish technical feasibility of a device that detects intricate textural patterns in a contactless approach and provides auditory feedback to augment mechanosensory learning. If successful, the technology could unlock the full potential of...

Federal Grant Award Summary Award Details: Funding Agency: National Eye Institute (NEI) Federal Grant Program: Vision Research (CFDA 93.867) Awardee: Newhaptics Corp, Ann Arbor, Michigan Total Obligated Funds: $559,871 Award Date: July 1, 2025 Project Period: Two years (completion date June 30, 2027) Products and Services: Newhaptics Corp will develop TITO (Touch-In-Touch-Out), a refreshable Braille and tactile graphic display device equipped with multipoint touch sensing capabilities designed...

Independence Science LLC was awarded a $254,767 Project Grant from the National Science Foundation under the Engineering (47.041) federal grant program. The grant will fund the company's "Synergizing Braille and Science: Real-Time Accessibility of Tactile Graphics in Laboratory Settings for Blind and Low Vision (BLV) Students" project from January 1, 2022 to December 31, 2022. The project aims to develop technologies that will provide blind and low vision students hands-on access to...

This Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Federal Grant Program (CFDA 47.070) provides $400,000 to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to investigate methods and systems that allow blind and low-vision (BLV) users to build customized, interactive multisensory data representations spanning text, audio, and tactile modalities. The goal is to empower BLV individuals to engage in data analysis as richly...

Federal Grant Award Summary A Cubed Design LLC (doing business as Accessible Affordable Accelerated Design) received a $305,000 Project Grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP) program (CFDA 47.084) to develop a novel refreshable Braille device designed to address cost and durability limitations in current Braille technology. The primary deliverable is a cost-effective, mechanically-based refreshable Braille display featuring...

This federal Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the STEM Education (CFDA 47.076) program is funding the development and testing of software and hardware tools to enable faculty, staff, postdoctoral research fellows, and graduate students who are blind or have low vision to generate, identify, and manipulate digital data patterns and trends in the fields of chemistry, math, computer and information sciences. The $741,159 award to Newhaptics Corp and the...

Summary Objective ED, Inc. received a $300,000 Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Project Grant from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR), CFDA 93.433, awarded June 1, 2025, with completion by August 31, 2026. The primary deliverable is Financial Fitness Adventures (FFA), an accessible interactive fiction (AIF) computer-based learning system designed to improve financial literacy among visually impaired high school...

This $256,000 National Science Foundation SBIR Phase I Project Grant will support the development of a haptic glove for real-time speech comprehension by Subtle Technology LLC. The glove aims to convert auditory speech into information perceivable through the skin as a potential supplement to existing techniques like lip reading for the over 466 million people worldwide with hearing loss. Key objectives include developing an intuitive touch-based language representation of words and a...

This $749,685 National Science Foundation project grant under the Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships program (CFDA 47.084) will fund the development of an Automated, Integrated, Multimodal Software (AIMS) system to improve inclusive access to information for persons with disabilities. Saint Louis University leads a consortium that includes software companies Vital, Unar Labs, and Viewplus Technologies to build a unified framework for authoring, converting, and delivering accessible content...