Engineering a More Accessible Future
A formative childhood memory and burgeoning design prowess led Yash Mehta ’28 to a potential breakthrough for those with visual impairment: an affordable, digital braille-reading device that can also help with object detection.
Story and Photography by Kate Auger
A steady series of beeps permeates the Upper School fabrication lab, growing in speed as Yash Mehta ’28 moves toward a table. The source of the sound is strapped to his chest: a fist-sized square device that Mehta invented to aid object detection and braille-reading for people with visual impairment.
The device — which Mehta named BrailleNav — and his passion for creating assistive technology can be traced to a visit to a school in Delhi, India, when he was just 7 years old. His grandparents had supported Bharat Blind School philanthropically, and the visit had an outsize impact on Mehta. Witnessing students painstakingly hand-punching braille dots for college placement exams, he knew there had to be a more efficient way.
“The reason I started this whole project was because I visited that school once, and I noticed that the students had to manually punch out each and every dot, just to do their board exam, which is really monotonous and takes a lot of time out of the day. So I wanted to make that more efficient so that they can learn at a much faster rate.”
Digital braille readers can be prohibitively expensive, and Mehta’s goal was to create an affordable option for folks in developing countries. His initial project experimented with Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation (TENS) units to convey dots for braille by using electrical pulses, which mimic the feeling of raised dots. But the process couldn’t differentiate at short distances, so Mehta returned to the drawing board and found more success with small motors.
“As I got into more researching and investigating purposes with the TENS unit, I figured out that it wasn’t actually working that well. So, I’m actually a really big fan of motors. I’ve been working with them since I was a kid.”
In October 2024, Mehta’s ingenuity was recognized with first place in the technology category of the Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge. An initiative of the Society for Science, it’s known as the country’s premier middle school STEM competition, drawing nearly 2,000 applications this year.
But the innovation didn’t end there. Mehta had begun thinking about accessibility in movement as well, and he tweaked his braille-reading device to add another essential function: spatial assistance while walking. With that, BrailleNav was born. The device incorporates a LiDAR sensor for obstacle detection, setting it apart from other devices that typically use less accurate ultrasonic sensors.
The LiDAR sensors, while slightly more expensive, have increased precision, especially when trying to differentiate angled or fuzzy objects. The sensors measure distance by measuring the time it takes for a laser’s light to bounce off of an object. Mehta’s device collects those measurements and translates them into interval beeps indicating the proximity of objects near or around the user.
Another benefit of the device is that users can easily wear it, making it portable and convenient to access. With BrailleNav, users can detect objects up to 9 meters away and adjust the sensitivity of the device. In testing, it proved to be much more effective than using a white cane alone.
With his relationships with the Blind Relief Association in New Delhi, and the Governor Morehead School for the Blind in Raleigh, Mehta’s work has had a global and local impact. These partnerships enable essential testing of the product, and they’ve also led to lasting connections with students and faculty that inspire Mehta’s goals to offer versions of the device to people around the world.
“There are two main people that I’m still in contact with today: Sandesh Kapoor and Himanshu. I have texted with Sandesh about how to move my project forward. He’s a teacher at the Blind Relief Association. I basically tell him my updates and progress. And he recently asked me to send a unit to him so he can promote it throughout India because he goes to a lot of conferences to talk about assistive devices for the blind.
Himanshu was actually the first student I tested it on. He gave me really helpful feedback. He told me what could be fixed and what was already good.”
Mehta is working to patent BrailleNav, and to move the device beyond prototypes and into production so that he can help as many people as possible. He aims to offer models with varying levels of functionality and at different price points — with a goal of donating 2,000 units annually. Above all, Mehta envisions a product that is accessible to all.