We’re constantly amazed at the inventiveness and creativity of people around the world. A few weeks ago, PBS aired a story about a thirteen-year-old entrepreneur who created a braille printer out of Legos that is cheap enough to provide better opportunities for literacy among the sight-impaired. Quotes from the transcript are below, or you can click on the video above to watch the feature.

JACKIE JUDD: At the age of 12, Shubham Banerjee learned how random the universe can be.  One seemingly inconsequential occurs, in this case the ring of a doorbell, and life changes in a big way.

SHUBHAM BANERJEE: I looked out.  No one was there.  But I did see a flyer over there, and which asked for donations for the visually impaired.

I asked — I didn’t know why.  I just asked a random question to my parents.  How do blind people read?  They didn’t really have time for me, so they said: “Sorry, I’m busy.  Can you go Google it?”

JACKIE JUDD: And one thing lead to another.

Shubham, whose previous ambition had been to quarterback his football team, learned that a diminishing number of the blind read braille.  In part, voice recognition technology has taken away the need.  But the now 13-year-old became convinced that the cost of a braille printer, which expands the reading universe for the blind, is prohibitive.

SHUBHAM BANERJEE: I found out it was $2,000 onwards.  Many people don’t really have the — are not that privileged to own one.  And that’s when I decided to try and hack together a braille printer and a LEGO Mindstorms EV3 kit.

JACKIE JUDD: Yes, you heard correctly.  He ordered a robotic LEGO kit.  After seven attempts and many, many late-nights, voila, he had an inexpensive portable braille printer.

SHUBHAM BANERJEE: I had to make it myself, program it myself.  And I just seemed to make a braille printer.  So there are actually three motors.  This motor over here, it rotates the paper over here, so you would get the imprint — or output — sorry.  This motor moves the head left and right.  This motor over here moves the head up and down.

JACKIE JUDD: Shubham’s one-person focus group is Henry Wedler, blind since birth and a doctoral student in chemistry at the University of California, Davis.  Wedler learned about the LEGO printer from a local newspaper story and then got in touch.

You can read the entire transcript at its source here.