On a mission

MIDDLEBORO - When his newborn daughter Rebecca was diagnosed with Usher's Syndrome, a genetic condition which causes deafness and eventual vision loss, Jake Lacourse decided to explore all the options available to the family that could help her cope with those disabilities.

It wasn't long before he and wife Beth discovered the lack of affordable devices on the market to help young children learn to read Braille, a form of written language for blind people, in which letters are represented by patterns of raised dots felt with the fingertips. So, using his skills in engineering and new product development, the Middleborough father got to work on building one.

Almost a year later, Lacourse has created a working prototype of a low-cost educational toy that can be used to introduce Braille to visually-impaired children between the ages of three and six. He calls it the BecDot, a combination of Becca and the Braille dots he hopes will help his daughter and other children with similar disabilities learn the dot-reading system that can help them navigate a world that they can't see.

"We found out last September that she's deaf" during routine newborn testing, Lacourse said. When the diagnosis of Usher's Syndrome was confirmed, "we found out that Becca's going to lose her vision eventually as well," he explained.

The genetic condition affects about 25,000 people in the United States, such a small number that the medical community is not highly motivated to spend a lot of money doing research into the gene editing drugs which could help eliminate the condition, he said. The Foundation for Fighting Blindness is one agency working on such drug-based solutions, so earlier this year, the Lacourses helped organize a local fundraiser which brought in about $11,000 in donations to help the cause.

Because of the number of children dealing with vision loss is so small, the medical community has not come up with inexpensive Braille-teaching devices for youngsters either. Current Braille devices range from $1,000 to $25,000, a price range too expensive for many families, who typically have to wait until their visually-impaired children start school to learn the Braille system.

Lacourse wants to change that, noting that "the whole idea behind the BecDot's development is to make a very low-cost device" that families all over the world will be able to afford. "I'm going to create this device for under $100," he confidently said, expressing hopes that someday soon, it will be available for worldwide distribution.

The confidence comes from the electrical and mechanical engineer's past experience in product development and manufacturing, and his current job as director of hardware engineering for Onset Computer Corporation, a company which develops "low-cost solutions" to clients' needs for meteorological equipment and environmental testing devices, he indicated.

While the Lacourses have been "self-funding" the development of the BecDot prototype, "the company is very supportive of what I'm doing" with some financial support and providing him some flexibility in his work schedule, he said.

Lacourse has also received a lot of support from the open source movement, a worldwide network of computer experts, engineers and inventors who share ideas, technological skills, and other resources via websites, blogs, and other means.

"It's more than just me working on this... I'm bouncing ideas off a number of experts in various fields," he noted. With their help, and a 3-D printer to make components, he has created a working model of a Braille-teaching device based on object association, or "teaching through touch," Lacourse explained.

In simplest terms, when a small toy labeled with a pre-programmed label on it is inserted into the BecDot, the reader pops up blocks which spell out the Braille letters representing that toy. For example, if a labeled toy dog was put into the reader, the device would raise dots spelling out D-O-G in Braille on three blocks, and make a barking noise for the user.

The blocks could also be used to teach textures, numbers, or a variety of other learning goals, Lacourse said. Sounds or lights would provide additional stimuli that would make the device "a fun way for children to learn," he suggested.

While the prototype has been tested at home with the aid of daughter Reagan, age eight, the inventor is now ready to take the device to the next level of product testing. Upcoming meetings with the staff and students at the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown "to give me useful feedback on the design," he said.

"I still have some (technological) challenges to work out, but nothing that will prevent this from going to market," Lacourse added. He estimates it would take less than $100,000 to make the molds for the plastic components, buy the electronic components, and get the first large-scale production run made, he said.

Lacourse is also entering the BecDot prototype into a product showcase contest sponsored by the California-based Not Impossible Labs organization, which he feels he has a good shot of winning. The prize would get him an invitation to the next Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where he hopes to make some industry contacts and perhaps secure some investment capital that will help him get the product to market.

If successful in marketing the BecDot, and forming a company to manufacture and distribute the product worldwide - a process which might take another year - he would use any profits from the device to hire more engineers to research and develop other devices to assist people with blindness and other disabilities with the challenges of daily life, he said.

Not "if" it goes to market, but how soon, and how many devices could be made, the inventor suggests, envisioning the future manufacture or perhaps 100,000 BecDots in the near future, and worldwide distribution of the low-cost device.

The motivation behind creating the BecDot may be "adapting the world" lacking affordable Braille teaching devices for the very young to help his own daughter reach her full potential in life, but the end goal is much larger, Lacourse said... that of helping families all over the globe deal with similar disabilities in an affordable way.

"I will pull this off," he declared with that steadfast confidence expressed earlier. "The question is just the scale of it," he declared.

(For more information on Usher's Syndrome, and the Lacourse family's campaign to bring the BecDot to the rest of the world, visit the website, https://memoriesforbecca.com.)