Feng Boyao is a 14-year-old student at No. 37 Middle School in Taiyuan. He often goes to the library to read books. One day, he noticed that there weren’t many Braille (盲文) books provided for the blind and that most of those books were outdated (过时的).

At the same time, Meng Shuqi, Feng’s classmate, knew that one of her relatives couldn’t read the latest books because of the same reason. They then teamed up to help the blind by fixing the problem.

One year later, the two teenagers succeeded in inventing a new kind of Braille reader. In July, their work won first prize in a national competition. When connected to a computer, their Braille reader can turn words into raised dots (凸起的点). Blind people can then read by touching the dots.

“After doing market research by comparing different Braille readers, we’ve found that most Braille readers are very hard to use and expensive. Each of them sells for over 10,000 yuan,” Feng said. “So we decided to develop a user-friendly product especially for young blind children from Grade 1 to Grade 3. Moreover, it only costs about 2,000 yuan. ”

To make the invention, the team gained (获得) lots of knowledge and skills by reading online materials and asking their teachers for help.

After making their first device (设备), Feng and Meng visited a school for the blind to get advice. They then improved their device. For example, they changed the size of the screen and the amount of space between the dots. “We hope the invention will be widely used in the future to help those blind people who can’t afford expensive Braille readers,” Meng said.

Believe it or not, soon computers and other machines can remember you by looking at your eyes! The programme (程序) works because everyone’s eyes are different. So in the future you won’t have to remember any numbers when you want to use a machine or take money out of a bank.You’ll just look at the machine and it will be able to tell that it’s you.

Scientists are working on other systems (系统), too. Machines can know you from the shape of your hand or even your smell soon. We already have machines that can tell who you are from your voice or the mark (记号) made by your fingers.

Eye-recognition is better than other kinds because your eyes don’t change as you get older, or get dirty like hands or fingers. And even twins have different eyes, so the programme can be up to 94% correct. However, some other programmes may only be 51% correct now. In Britain, 91% people say that they like the idea of eye-recognition.

In the future your computer will be looking at you in the eye. So smile!

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