apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

We know it's hard to tell from those tiny, low-res photos, but what this thing does is captures a scene and "prints" it onto a sheet with lots of tiny bumps, just like you see in braille.

The designers of the camera, which won the Red Dot design concept of 2008 award, hope that it can "produce a record of one’s environment, and perhaps, a greater sense of attachment to the world" as the blind can "now feel objects that they are unable to see."
They'd also be able to collect images in albums, which is actually pretty cool when you think about it.

Still in the concept stages. No word yet on whether or not you can "braille capture" anything other than a plant on a white background, so we'll see how this one goes. But we like the designers' moxie for thinking around challenges. Didn't a U.S. Patent official resign from his post after the telephone was invented, saying something like "everything that can be invented has already been invented?" Well, apparently not. Still a good quote though.