alt Hacker NewsThere was a device called "Braille Me" announced some years ago, a 20-cell magnetically based reader which was intended to be a more affordable option, but I haven't heard anything about it in a while.
https://www.nbp.org/ic/nbp/technology/brailleme.html?from_se...
There's a lot of vaporware in Braille tech where people announce they can sell something for $X and then it either doesn't materialize at all or costs much more on release.