Meet Shubham Banerjee, a 13-year-old who has developed a ground-breaking, cheap Braille printing machine that has evaded the most brilliant minds at Silicon Valley startups for years.



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According to the National Federation of the Blind, fewer than 10% of 1.3 million blind Americans can read Braille, down from 50% in the 1950s. The reason? The growth in assistive technology such as voice-to-text software.

When Banerjee stumbled across these facts last year (aged just 12 years old), he realized that many people simply can’t afford this costly technological solution. But what if he could slash the cost of a Braille printer from $2,000 (the current going rate) to $200?



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After seven weeks of hard work Banerjee astounded everyone by building a working prototype of a cheap Braille printer called “Braigo“, using a Lego Mindstorms EV3 robotics kit and some small electrical components that cost a few dollars.



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His software engineer father Niloy, ever encouraging of his son’s educational endeavours, was only too happy to shell out $350 for a Mindstorms kit.

Banerjee’s Braigo machine will hit the market this fall, but he’s also providing open source documentation to anyone who wants to buy a Mindstorms kit and try making a Braigo v1.0 at home.



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“Some [people] said that the market is not that big, or [that this is] a specialty product,” Banerjee told Smithsonian Magazine. “I just went ahead with what I thought was right.”

Watch Banerjee’s story below: