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- Country of residence: Palestine
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Heba Mustafa Salahat, who works within the administrative staff at the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology at Palestine Al-Ahliyya University, obtained a patent for a “new reading and writing system for people with visual impairments” and it was officially registered with the General Administration of Intellectual Property at the Ministry of National Economy at the end of last July.
The new system for reading and writing for people with visual disabilities shortens the number of numbers adopted by people with visual disabilities in representing letters and numbers using the Braille method. Only one of the numbers, and therefore one representation of all letters and numbers can be generalized in the different languages of the world. Where visually impaired people have been using the Braille system in reading and writing since 186 years, which is a tactile writing system for salient points, where the system consists of a number of cells, each of which contains two columns, each column consists of three points. Thus, the cell consists of six points, each group of points represents a letter or a number, and it can be read by moving the hand from left to right on each line, which requires the learner to memorize the location of the six points in the cell, as the order of the points indicates the symbol of the letter (first second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth).
Thus, shortening the number of points that represent letters and numbers makes it easier for the learner to memorize, remember and deal with them, and this is the goal of this invention, whose idea was born as a result of direct contact with university students with visual impairments, and identifying the problems they faced during their university studies, which was Most notably, the difficulty of taking exams and taking notes during class lectures, in addition to the high cost of Braille reading and writing tools.
The principle of the new system for reading and writing for people with visual disabilities is based on writing using a special keyboard for the system, which is connected to the screen of a computer or smart device, and then reading using a special pen for the system.
Heba Salahat adds, “Thanks to God Almighty for giving me the patent. She also points to the prominent role played by the university administration in forming a committee to follow up on the idea since its inception.” The university is the main supporter of leadership and creativity, and it strives to provide a creative university environment. To its cadres and students, to enhance the spirit of competition and innovation for them, and to raise the level of constructive cooperation among them.
The university administration will also work to continue supporting this invention by achieving the second stage, which is depositing the invention with one of the international patent protection offices of the World Intellectual Property Organization “WIPO”, and then moving forward with the manufacture of system tools and marketing it around the world, as part of the university’s strategic goals in Contribute to achieving one of the global sustainable development goals, which is to provide quality education, especially for the visually impaired.
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