Tactile display apparatus

Abstract

A tactile display reads out information corresponding to at least a portion of an image appearing on a computer screen comprising a 2-dimensional array of pixels. The tactile display comprises a plurality of tactile output elements arranged in a 2-dimensional array. Each of the plurality of output elements corresponds to at least one pixel of the computer screen and is movable, in response to an input representative of a value of a property of the at least one pixel, to a predetermined one of a plurality of discrete, tactilely-recognizable positions. The positions of the plurality of tactile output elements provide a tactilely-recognizable pattern representative of said information. Pursuant to another embodiment of the invention, there is provided a tactile display comprising a plurality of tactile output elements. Each of the elements corresponds to at least one pixel of a computer screen image and is movable to one of a plurality of tactilely-recognizable positions, each position being representative of an n-bit gray scale value of said at least one pixel. The positions of the plurality of tactile output elements provide tactilely-recognizable information relating to the computer screen image.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.