Tablet solution in sight

A Boston nonprofit is putting the finishing touches on the world's first affordable "tablet" for the blind, an Android-based device that is part of an innovative campaign to turn around a little-known literacy crisis among the visually impaired. "If only 12 percent of children could read today, it'd be the biggest discussion in the world," said Brian A. MacDonald, the president of National Braille Press, located in the Fenway. "But because the blind are such a small population, it's not very well known." Literacy among the blind has plummeted in the past four decades to that astonishing number -- 12 percent -- due in part to the lack of qualified Braille instructors in regular classrooms, the flipside of the mainstreaming movement. MacDonald and his team of techies hope their Braille tablet for the blind -- dubbed the B2G-20 -- will fill this void, eventually leveling the playing field for a population increasingly mired in unemployment and poverty.