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Roland Galarneau, a legally blind Quebecois with just 5 percent vision, was an electrical engineer ("Technology for the Disabled"). When computers were still in their infancy in the 1960s, he envisioned a new solution for creating braille characters on paper ("Technology for the Disabled"). Previously, the printing of braille was a slow, painful and very expensive process. In May 1972, Galarneau developed the "Converto-Braille": a home-made electromechanical computer linked to a teletype machine which fed its memory ("Converto-Braille History."). It scanned and translated texts into Braille at a rate of 100 words per minute ("Converto-Braille History."). It's very remarkable that even though Galarneau was disabled, he still undertook the electronic design, machining and assembly himself ("Technology for the Disabled")!
His success hasn't gone unnoticed! Galarneau gave a new sense of hope to the visually-impaired community. Shortly after the launch of his invention, the collection of books titles in braille grew to contain over 3,500 titles ("Converto-Braille History."). In 1976, Galarneau's corporation (named Convert-O-Braille) began producing Braille books free of charge for visually-impaired students until it signed its first Braille transcription contract with the Department of Education of Quebec in 1978 ("Converto-Braille History.").
Later that year, Convert-O-Braille was given a grant, which went towards putting a micro-chip into the computers ("Converto-Braille History."). This led to the publishing of The Regional, a weekly Outaouais newspaper in Braille, distributed free of charge to approximately fifty visually-impaired persons who read Braille ("Converto-Braille History.").
Today, braille translation software exists to handle most of the common languages of the world, and many technical areas, such as math, music, and tactile graphics (Braille). This is all thanks to a visionary blind man, Roland Galarneau.