Competence for more than 40 years
Already our company founder Friedrich-Horst Papenmeier had the will and the ability to find innovative solutions to special problems. 20 years after the founding of the company, the Reha Devision was born. Our claim to innovative solutions to the technical challenges of the blind and visually impaired has been with us for over 40 years and continues to be our daily motivation.
1975
In the early 70s Papenmeier worked together with Prof. Dr. med. Werner Boldt from the University of Dortmund on a research project. The result was presented to the public in 1975: BRAILLEX, the first device with an electronic Braille display. This laid the foundation for the Reha Devision.
BRAILLEX saved information and reproduced it in braille on the electronic Braille display. Information could be entered via the keyboard and saved under a keyword. Under this keyword, the information could be retrieved later. BRAILLEX became very popular. The users preferred BRAILLEX mainly because of the ease of use and the fast playback of the information.
1979
In 1979, Papenmeier received the Louis Braille Prize for BRAILLEX. Today, the BRAILLEX prototype has been exhibited as a milestone in the technology for the blind in the Deutsches Museum in Munich.
BRAILLEX was sold in the original version for more than 10 years. During this time it was modified several times: for example, the floppy diskette drive replaced the data storage on audio cassettes. A serial port has been added to allow the connection of other devices. For example, BRAILLEX could be connected to a memory typewriter, a braille printer or one of the home computers that is just starting up.
Later, Papenmeier developed new braille displays to connect to the computer, according to the needs of blind computer users. BRAILLEX became the trademark of a whole family of Braille print lines (Braille devices) made by Papenmeier.
1981
In the early 1980s, blind stenographers and typists used a memory typewriter with LCD. The information displayed in the LCD displayed a braille line in Braille at the same time. The device was called BRAILLEX Control. People with advanced needs used the first freely programmable computer with integrated Braille display, the BRAILLEX PC.
1985
The first Braille display to connect to IBM PC and Compatible, BRAILLEX IB 80, has been launched. With this hardware solution, blind people could access all PCs and software as long as they worked in plain text mode.
1991
This year, the new BRAILLEX 2D Screen Braille display was released to help blind PC users keep up with the changes in the PC world. In addition to displaying the screen information, the BRAILLEX 2D screen also provided the blind with an overview of the structure of the entire screen content. The increasing use of graphical user interfaces in software development posed a new challenge for Papenmeier.
1994
Through forward-looking development activities, Papenmeier met the challenges of graphical user interfaces in 1994 with the product WinDOTS. WinDOTS translates graphical user interfaces into text so that blind PC users can work with Windows as well as sighted people, because the special Windows structure has been preserved. WinDOTS is very easy to use and has quickly become a bestseller.
1999
Since mid-1999, Papenmeier has been selling the ScreenReader JAWS by Henter-Joyce. Since the spring of 1999, a new generation of Braille displays has been available, offering a completely new operating convenience with the navigation bar. As a special control element, all BRAILLEX EL models have a navigation bar, which can be used much more effectively.
2009
Since December 2009, the new high-resolution document reading camera VISULEX Eagle Pro has been on the market. VISULEX Eagle Pro is the first original camera to deliver a true-to-life picture in widescreen format. People affected by RP (retinitis pigmentosa) have high demands on a high-resolution camera system. VISULEX Eagle Pro impresses with its extremely high resolution of 1920 x 1200 pixels and low initial magnification (1.1x). This functionality helps to perceive as much text as possible.
2000 until Today
Participation in international, u. a. EU funded research projects:
- TeDUB - 2002 to 2004
- Basisbraille - 2000 to 2002
- ENABLED - 2004 to 2007
- ProGuide - 2006 to 2008
- ProGuide2 - 2008 to 2010
- HyperBraille - 2007 to 2011
- Hospital Engineering - Innovation Pathways for the Hospital of the Future (Cooperation with the Fraunhofer Institute) 2011 to 2014