Doha, 24 March 2019 - Challenge 22 winners Bonocle say winning the second cycle of the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy's (SC) flagship innovation programme has drastically helped move their project from concept phase to what they describe as being 'very close' to market-ready.
Abdelrazek Aly, Mahmoud Eltouny, Ramy Abdulzaher and Kariem Fahmi – all Qatar residents – were winners in 2017, and have since made remarkable progress with their groundbreaking solution for a braille digital accessibility device.
"Thanks to Challenge 22 we are now very close to a product-level prototype," explained Aly. "Using the mentorship and grant money, we've been able to develop more electronics in-house, and we were able to outsource other elements, such as the industrial design, to domain experts. So we are very close now to having a product that is ready to be manufactured."
Bonocle was born in the face of adversity. Three years into his undergraduate studies, Aly was involved in a car crash that resulted in him suffering a broken right hand. In order to sit his exams, he was forced to seek the help of his university's special services department, who provided him with a helper to assist him in writing papers as he dictated.
During numerous hours spent with the department, Aly came into contact with many of the visually impaired students also attending the university – which led to the eureka moment.
"I interacted with a lot of visually impaired people and learnt about what they go through every day," he explained. "They had to get people to volunteer and write all the papers they receive in braille so they can get access.
"The team soon realised there was a lack of access to information for them. That's when the idea for Bonocle came."
A passion for increasing literacy opportunities for visually impaired people quickly developed. The team then worked out how best to provide assistive technology that anybody can afford. Soon after, Bonocle – an amalgamation of 'braille' and 'monocle' – was born.
Shaped like a computer mouse, it is an ingenious, easy-to-use electronic device that uses Bluetooth technology to transform digital content into braille messages, thereby improving access to content for people with visual impairments – and at a much lower cost than existing devices.
One of the team members, Eltouny, said winning Challenge 22 – and the subsequent mentorship opportunities – had helped develop the product further. Bonocle now features a device that allows thousands of braille books to be stored within the device, allowing users to effectively carry a braille library in their pockets.
He said: "Before Challenge 22 the project was a little bit different. Users had to touch the screen to access the braille. After winning Challenge 22 we were able to do more testing, more travelling and sit with more visually impaired individuals. They told us they would prefer it if the device was on a table – which is something they are currently used to."
