ATU773 – Dot Inc with Tim Hornik

Hi, I’m Tim Hornick, the sales development manager for Dot Incorporated, and this is your Assistive Technology Update.

Hello, and welcome to your Assistive Technology Update, a weekly dose of information that keeps you up to date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist individuals with disabilities and special needs. I’m your host, Josh Anderson with the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana. Welcome to episode 773 of Assistive Technology Update. It is scheduled to be released on March 20th, 2026. On today’s show, we’re joined by Tim Hornick, sales development manager for Dot Inc. And he’s here to tell us about the DotPad X, some of the other great things coming out of Dot. Don’t forget, listeners, if you’ve ever got a question, a suggestion for a guest, something you want to know more about, or really anything assistive technology based that you’d like to discuss, please, please do reach out. You can call our listener line at 317-721-7124, or drop us a line via email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org.

Thank you so much for listening, and let’s go ahead and get on with the show. Today, listeners, we’re excited to welcome Tim Hornick of Dot, and he’s here to tell us about the DotPad and some of the other amazing technology offered by Dot, and we cannot wait to learn more. Tim, welcome to the show.

Well, thank you, Josh, for having me on the show today, and I am very much looking forward to being able to talk more about what we are doing here at Dot Incorporated with the DotPad, our. AI solutions, and other Dot tools and possibilities to really help individuals explore the possibilities of multi-line Braille with refreshable tactile graphics.

Yeah, and I can’t wait to get into talking about everything that you all offer, but before we do that, could you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?

Well, Josh, my name is Tim. I live in Lawrence, Kansas. I am our sales development manager here for the US for Dot. And my background is assisted technology going back to last about 10 plus years. Before that, I’m also a social worker, and just being able to go all around this rehab ecosystem that’s been fun to be on multiple sides of from case management, to supervisory roles, to service line deliveries, to just a whole bunch of stuff. And before that, did about 10 years in the Army that was caused for my blindness, and been able to just really enjoy a whole wide world of possibilities just because of all these different experiences I’ve had.

Awesome. And has AT changed in the last 10 years? No, I’m just kidding. That would be a whole nother show. We’re definitely not getting into that, or we’ll never be able to end or actually get to the things we’re here to talk about. So Tim, I guess let’s just start with Dot as a company, kind of big picture. Can you tell us about it?

Yeah. So Dot Incorporated got founded back in about 2015, 2016, where our co-founders, Eric and Key created the first Dot cell as a low cost, very efficient Braille cell technology. And they kind of came up with this after one of their fellow students in college was carrying around the Bible. And let’s face it, the Bible, when you start breaking down the volumes, you’re talking about a massive tome. And when they seen that, they’re like, “Okay, we need to do something a little better.” So they created the first dot cell, and we first seen this in the DotWatch, which was a very unique wearable that did Braille back in 2017. And this really started doing the possibilities of what can you do with this type of technology of making it modular, making it very efficient for both energy, as well as very cost-efficient. And then they further developed it. Around 2022 is when we started hearing the wonderful announcements coming from Hemaware and APH about the Monarch, which is created thanks to dot cell technology, second generation.

And now we got the third cell generation in the DotPad X. And what we’ve seen over this lifespan of Dot as a company is just the ultimate possibilities of what can we do with these types of cells? How can we access multi-lines of Braille? How can we get good access to refreshable graphics in form factors that we can use and need in order to do all this successfully? And it’s just been an absolute pleasure following them over that lifespan, both as an end user and now working with them here to explore what can you do with this type of technology.

That’s awesome. And you led me right into my next question. I guess let’s talk about the DotPad X.

So the DotPad X is our multi-line Braille tactile graphics display. This is a very portable and versatile display that features two displays. And this is going to catch a lot of people off guard on it’s like, why do you got a Braille display that has two displays? Well, the reason why we do that is because how we use the display. So the main display that we always are interested in is our primary display. And this is a matrix that consists of about 300 cells that is arranged in an eight line by 20 cell if you’re doing multi-line Braille or a 60 by 40 arraignment for tactile graphics. And this gives us a lot of awesome capabilities of connecting it with our screen readers, whether it’s JAWS, NVDA or voiceover to be able to read text, be able to create graphics with our DotCanvas app. Or we have a lot of developers coming up and using our software development kit to be able to create things from games like Sudoku, Tetris, Connect Four, Battleship, to readers, to just a whole lot of great possibilities that end users and developers are creating on their own.

And all that is thanks to, like I said, that very rich array of that primary display. And we also have a secondary single line 20 cell display. And this is used differently based on each of those scenarios. So for DotCanvas and voiceover, for example, when you are looking at tactile graphics on that primary display, that single line’s going to give you a Braille text description of what that is. If you’re in JAWS, that single line is going to give you status information of your JAWS, both the location of the cursor to what Braille mode you are using in JAWS and other information. And looking at how folks are developing their own solutions, they are leveraging that single line display for a whole lot of other possibilities to show information that we need, whether it’s because they’re doing tactile graphics of some variety on the top and they need additional information to provide content to help describe it, to just who knows. I mean, that’s the beauty of this, is these possibilities.

Now, between these two displays, we have six navigation buttons. Now, I know a lot of people are going to say, how do we do input with the DotPad X? We cannot do Perkins-style input with it, but what we can do with our six navigation buttons is control our screen readers or for those folks that are developing their own solutions, they’re using those buttons for very unique purposes based on how they wish for that interaction to occur. So using the example of voiceover. So with those six navigation buttons, I could move the voiceover cursor, I can access the rotor, I can navigate by rotor items, I could double tap, I could go to the home screen with JAWS, same thing, panning, all those types of good options that we would expect to be able to do on the device.

So I really don’t need to take my hands from the device when I am reviewing and reading texts and graphs and all that other type of good stuff that we’re using these types of devices for.

Nice. And Tim, as we kind of talk about tactile graphics, can you give just some examples of some of the different kind of things that can be conveyed through those tactile graphics?

So Josh, there’s a lot that can be conveyed through these tactile graphics. Some of the ones that I’ve had a lot of fun working with people as I demonstrated across the country as well as use myself is first and foremost, getting access to those visual representations of data, a.k.a. graphs, charts, be able to retain some type of spatial understanding of what those items are. So for example, even though this is going to be more of a Braille use case, with JAWS, what you’re able to do is you’re able to understand tables and spreadsheets where you could track down a row as well as track cross and be able to get all that information that’s contained in that spreadsheet that you could fit on that DotPad display and understand what is there when it comes down to math charts. So we do get a couple of programs in the works for folks that are using this in schools that they need to bring up various math related graphs, that they’ll be able to do that by inputting those formulas and then be able to explore that graph, understand what those curves are like, understand what the histograms and scatter plots are all looking like.

And even for myself, so I got two daughters and one of the things that we’ll do is we’ll play things like Pictionary. And how many times have you heard of blind individuals playing Pictionary with sighted counterparts?

Not very often. Not very often for sure.

Yeah. No, and that’s one of the beauties of it is, I’ve had my fair share of situations with my kids where it’s like, okay, that is a cat, that is a person, that’s a rainbow, that’s a unicorn that you can do all these fun things with the tactile graphics. And we got a whole lot more coming down the line of what’s going to be possible as we look at how can we leverage Artificial Intelligence to give us better tactile experiences. So we have a partnership with Microsoft leveraging Copilot so we can gain understandings of what PowerPoint presentations are looking like. So understanding what that layout of those slides are, understanding the text that’s on it, just like there’s a reason why the sighted community loves PowerPoint is the amount of information you can contain on a single slide. And for the longest time, we are limited to purely auditory or single line understandings of that.

And now with the DotPad, we could start to understand what is the true format of those cells and how it is conveying information. And then because it’s leveraging Copilot, you’re also able to do a few additional tasks with it. We have a project going on with Google Gemini in some schools bringing STEM content to light by bringing textbooks. And well, let’s face it, a lot of teachers nowadays are giving students handouts or excerpts or stuff like that. And what we’re able to do with Google Gemini STEM is leverage the top head for students gain access to that information. And then of course, DotCanvas is just one of these absolutely fantastic quick ways of, say you are a TVI or ONM instructor and you’re doing some pre-route planning and you need to show what’s the layout of the classroom, or what does a roundabout look like and how would you approach it?

You could quickly draw that up in DotCanvas with just using your finger and your iPad to more complex situations of using DotCanvas to upload images. For example, I’ve had some fun as a Lifelong Chicago Bears fan as I was at different conferences, you might’ve seen me showcase how to upload images. And one of those images usually is the Chicago Bears logo, which is the wishbone C, to illustrate how can you convey this type of information. And this is all being done by me, real-time, blind person using a screen reader, as well as be able to make my own tactile graphics. So when it comes down to what can you do with Tactile Graphics, ultimately it’s up to you that the tools are there and there’s more tools coming and it comes down to what do you want to do with Tactile Graphics? And I will caveat that by saying there are some limitations.

So uploading images, say you do got a scenic look or you got your wedding photos or you got photos of your kids. Understand that those photos might be a bit much when you do upload it because of the amount of information contained in those photos. And the only way that I will say definitively on that is the only way we fully know for certain is to do it. And so this is why I won’t say no to certain things. I will say, let’s see what comes up and experience it together.

Tim, you probably got a ton of these, but can you tell me a story about someone’s experience using DotPad X and maybe something that surprised you or sticks with you?

Like I said, I have several of these stories, Josh, and I’ll give one that I was at the consumer electronic show and had a fellow blind person with me and showcased seeing what is possible. And one of the things I was showing, it’s math related. So visually speaking, when sight people learn addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, we learn in a way that’s purely visual on how you have your top row of numbers and then plus minus multiply, then your bottom row, then you got your equals and just how all that lines up and how you go up and down those columns as you’re doing it. Or even a division where you got the little number, then you got the house that contains the number you’re dividing by and be able to do that. And being able to show them those concepts of, this is why so often we as blind people may have some sticking points with understanding these math concepts because the way that they are taught are so visual that being able to show them exactly what that visual information is and then it’s like, oh, that now makes total sense on why does they described it in a certain way.

And that was just really neat because me and myself, so I used to be sighted before I went totally blind and that was one, like I said, I was able to tap into my visual memory, understand exactly what was going on and they came up through a School for the Blind as well as public education and was just told, “No, you just have to memorize it. Don’t worry about understanding what it is that we’re trying to explain.” And that really helped them then 20, 30 years later, granted, but it’s be able to understand that. Another good example is I had a university send me one of their quizzes in their statistics class and they’re like, “Can you do this? Can you take some of these graphs and make it into tactile expressions?” So our students would be able to understand it because what they were asking their students to do before, it just leverage AI to get the answer type deal, ask someone else.

And it’s like, “No, that’s not the answer.” That should never be the answer in my opinion is, “Oh, just ask AI for the answer.” Because let’s face it is AI, it does get things right, it does get things wrong, but it doesn’t explain the process. And no, why were they doing that? Because they didn’t have the resources and the time to be able to create tactile representations of that using either swell paper or embossing it themselves. And so able to go and say, “Well, here we go. ” Okay, me, total blind dude, just popping up, uploading it and saying, “Okay, here’s the graph. Is this correct for the answers?” And just be able to do that in real time. In fact, I did this as part of a presentation real time just showing what can you do is this possible, explaining how it is appearing in real time and just knowing that we can be able to get to that.

And then another one that I’ll end on is had a individual super excited of gaining access to multi-line Braille. So I had it connected with voiceover, I had a Kindle book open and the speed which they’re able to start reading that nothing wrong with single line displays. I have my own slew of single line displays that I use, but you’re still doing single line at a time. And so you do got some fragmentation as you’re hitting that pan and they were super excited. They called home, talked to their wife and started immediately reading in real time a book that they’ve never read. I had the Odyssey opened in Kindle and there they are reading in real time, real smoothly and being able to go and go through a couple of pages in minutes without having to do those pauses like we generally do when we’re panning single lines, panning after a paragraph or two and just keep reading.

While we don’t have any research yet showing this, and that is something I know is going to change, is that we are going to see with these types of multi-line displays, the ability for individuals to have decrease stress on cognitive load where they’re trying to remember parcels of information in order to make sense of it, that’s going to go away with these multi-line displays. It’s the reason why it goes away when you’re using traditional hard copy Braille is because you have all that information there. And so just seeing that in real time as people are reading, exploring graphs and just doing all these other things, it’s just so moving to just be like, “This is why this technology’s here. This is why we have said for a number of years, the holy grail of Braille is multi-line. And now that it’s here, we’re able to get to this using the devices we’re already using.

So it’s not as if we need to learn anything different. It’s using what we’re using to get to the information that we need.”

Nice. That’s awesome. Tim, when we got a little bit of time left, what are you looking forward to?

What I am truly looking forward to, Josh, is going to be how we continue to advance access to information, leveraging Artificial Intelligence. I mentioned our little partnership with Microsoft with Copilot and Google Gemini. We have our own little app that we are creating for helping folks learn pre-Braille and early Braille and Braille literacy skills using natural language speaking. So it’s an AI power thing that you can talk to and help guide you through lessons. And I really see this as one of those next stages in evolution of how do we access information and be able to maybe use AI prompts of saying, “Look, I need a tactile representation of say the Sears Tower or the NFL logo,” or just other types of things that we normally don’t have access to. In addition to the stuff that students and teachers need in real time. This stuff that we otherwise would have to spend a week or two requesting, developing and getting access to.

And I really see Artificial Intelligence as being that equalizer for us. And this is why we are working as a company with Microsoft and Google to get it to the point where we might be able to say, “Yeah, I need a tactile representation of this and then we have it. ” Like you said, you’re in biology, you’re learning the cell or you’re learning what neurons are. Yes, you can draw those out with Canvas or just imagine if the teacher just or the student just goes and does a prompt of tactile image of this and be able to tweak it based on what it is that they’re doing. This way, now you’re just not using already created deck of tactile graphics. You’re able to create your own specific to your individual need, use case or example. And the other one that I am looking forward to hoping we could see movement on is going to be access to not just Maps.

So we do got some access to Tactile Graphs. TMaps is a great program for being able to get access to it, but I would just love it one day we can just go ahead and bring up Google Maps or Apple Maps and be able to just immediately export that or bring that over to the DotPad and be able to go and say, “Oh, well, here’s this route.” And be able to have really awesome understanding of what that is, what side of the street stuff is on. And I know that’s way down the road, but I would love to be able to see that. And this is technology that can power those experiences because it is portable, it is able to connect to these devices, and now it’s just a matter of what would it take to get us there. So those are the two I would love to see, AI as well as navigation assistance.

I want to mention our great partnership that we have with the HIMS Selvas BrailleSense team, that that is going to be an awesome feature coming out in their next major operating system update on both the BrailleSense 6, as well as being included in the BrailleSense 7 is the ability to connect to the dot pad. And with that, for folks that have used the HIMS BrailleSense Braille practice features, what you can do with that is just like I described with what we can do with our AI, you can get the tactile print as well as the Braille and be able to teach both and showcase all of this information. So whether, like I said, whether it’s an older adult like myself that needs to tap into visual memory to make the analogies, or whether you’re trying to teach a student what print characters are like, now you can and going both directions.

So yeah, it’s just going to help out the Braille literacy conundrum that we are facing. And yeah, let’s hope that this is one of those things that really allows us to move that needle back towards more than 10% of the population. Let’s get it back up to 20 plus percent of the blind population and just keep working for it. But yeah, just we need more tools to do it. We need more ways of showcasing this information. And yeah, I do feel this is a very, very powerful tool in that equation.

Almost definitely. And individualized to the individual how they learn and can give them some different options and ways. Well, Tim, what’s a great way for our listeners to find out more about Dot, about the DotPad and everything else we talked about today?

Awesome, Josh. Well, we have several ways you can learn a course. You can go to our website, and that is located at Dotincorp. That is D-O-T-I-N-C-O-R-P.com. We also have a wonderful podcast series called Raising the Dots that is hosted by the wonderful Dave Williams, and he brings on more than just information about our products. He brings on notable individuals from the field that are working within Braille and Tactile Graphics and have some awesome interviews with them similar to what we’re talking about right now. And it’s a great way of learning more about the state of Braille, state of tactile graphics, state of technology in general, as well as Dot’s role within that equation and what can we do. We also have a webinar series that is usually on the second Monday of the month, except the second Monday of March. It happens to be on CSUN a week.

So we’ll be back to our normal schedule and cadence coming up here in April and you can find more information about that by going to our website or for folks here in the US, just feel free to send me an email at timothy@dotincorp.com. That’s T-I-M-O-T-H-Y at dotincorp.com. And that would be a very easy way. You can also check us out on LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube by just doing a search for DotInc and that will get you to us.

Awesome. We’ll put links to all that down in the show notes. Well, Tim, thank you so much for coming on today for telling us about all the great things that Dot really offers and really opening up access for individuals who are blind or low vision using the multi-line Braille, as well as just all the great graphics and tools out there to help.

Yeah, I appreciate it, Josh. And thank you guys very much. I love what y’all have been doing with the Easterseals and the ATX projects, both there in Indiana as well as just sharing this information throughout your audiences because one thing I hear across country is there’s a vacuum. It’s very hard to get good, solid information about technology. So I love the fact that you guys are doing this and we have these frank conversations because it’s needed, man. So thank you.

It definitely is. Thanks again.

Do you have a question about assistive technology? Do you have a suggestion for someone we should interview on an assistive technology update? If so, call our listener line at 317-721-7124. Send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org or shoot us a note on Twitter @indataproject. Our captions and transcripts for the show are sponsored by the Indiana Telephone Relay Access Corporation or INTRAC. You can find out more about INTRAC at relayindiana.com. A special thanks to Nikol Prieto for scheduling our amazing guests and making a mess of my schedule. Today’s show was produced, edited, hosted, and fraught over by yours truly. The opinions expressed by our guests are their own and may or may not reflect those of the INDATA Project. Easterseals Crossroads are supporting partners or this host. This was your assistive technology update. And I’m Josh Anderson with the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana.

We look forward to seeing you next time. Bye-bye.