January 13, 2026
Dots, drama, and Braille beef
Show HN: Ever wanted to look at yourself in Braille?
Webcam dot-art toy ignites Braille backlash and coder snark
TLDR: A new terminal toy turns your webcam into dot art and joked about “Braille.” Commenters clapped back: it’s not Braille, debated tactile images for blind readers, and argued whether this is real craft or just pressing a button—sparking a lively accessibility and maker‑culture fight.
Someone dropped “dith,” a tiny program that turns your webcam or any photo into black‑and‑white dot art right in your computer’s text screen. It’s built in the Zig language, with no extra downloads, and offers five styles from “retro 8‑bit” to “film grain.”
The title joked about “looking at yourself in Braille,” and the comments detonated. Accessibility folks slammed the phrase—“This does not look like Braille…” declared one user—reminding everyone Braille uses tidy six‑ or eight‑dot cells, not random speckles. Another pointed to the Monarch tablet, a real device making tactile graphics for blind readers.
On the curious side, a commenter asked if an engraved picture could be “felt” like a photo, inviting blind readers to weigh in. That sparked a thoughtful sub‑thread about tactile graphics vs. Braille, and what actually helps people navigate images.
Meanwhile, the peanut gallery brought heat: one grump dismissed the whole thing as “telling a computer to make” it, while others defended the craft—classic algorithms aren’t AI magic, they’re old‑school techniques with a terminal‑art vibe. Verdict from the crowd: neat dot‑art toy, messy marketing. Call it “Braille” and you’ll get burned. Curious minds? Try the repo and decide for yourself: github.com/user/dith.
Key Points
- •“dith” renders live webcam feeds or image files as dithered output in the terminal.
- •It supports five modes: edge, atkinson, floyd_steinberg, blue_noise, and bayer, each suited for different visual results.
- •Built in Zig with native macOS camera integration; requires Zig 0.15.1+ and no external dependencies.
- •File inputs include PNG, JPEG, and BMP; camera input supports warmup frames and pipelined/direct strategies.
- •Users can fine-tune output with +threshold, +invert, +warmup, and +strategy; installation via git clone and zig build.