US Company ELIA have been developing the ELIA Alphabet, an alternative to Braille. It is based on roman character shapes and aimed at an older low vision audience. Currently only 1 in 35 severely vision impaired people in the US can read braille with 85% using it predominantly for labelling and note taking.
ELIA claim their alphabet can be learned in under an hour and is much more usable for users with low tactile sensitivty as it can be scaled and relies on familar letter shapes.
The ELIA Life Technologies page has more information.
