If you cross the word Braille with Lego you get the word Braigo and if you cross the need for a cheap Braille printer with an incredibly intelligent thirteen year old entering a high school science competition you get Braigo Labs, the company started by US teenager, Shubham Banerjee.
Young Shubham is the youngest person ever to get venture capital investment for a start-up from Silicon Valley, and it all came from a Lego set and a poster asking people to help blind people in his local area.
The poster inspired the young boy to look into the technology surrounding Braille printers, he was able to successfully reverse engineer the fairly simple machines that are usually sold for $2,000 a piece by their niche producers.
This is impressive, but the real genius came into play next when Shubham realised that he could create his own Braille printer from a Lego Mindstorms set he had in his house.
Not only did this innovation win him the science competition, it has also formed the beginning of a company and a potential revolution in reading for blind and visually impaired people.
Shubham has made the designs for his Lego printer available for free on the internet.
But, beyond this, he has started to create Braigo v2.0, a much faster and less Lego-y version of his printer to be sold at a much lower price than any current printer.
Braigo v2.0 promises to be the world’s first silent, light weight Braille printer and embosser as well as the cheapest by far available in shops by 2015.