Ever reached for the wrong medicine bottle but saw the label in time to avoid taking it? For the blind, mistaking medications can be harder to avoid — and potentially dangerous. At CES 2026, I saw a way to prevent those mistakes that’s a bit cheaper than the common labeling method. It also uses a voice interface instead of typing.
Blind people have used label makers to print labels in Braille for some time, but they’re expensive, costing upwards of $1,250. Mangoslab’s Nemonic Dot is a new competitor in the Braille label niche with a somewhat cheaper $995 price tag. The printer is envisioned as a way for family and friends to help their blind loved ones.
Mangoslab is a startup that spun off from Samsung’s internal C-Lab research department to launch its Nemonic sticky note printer years ago. At CES Unveiled this year, the group showed off its evolution of that printer in the Nemonic Dot. It’s a plastic box about the size of a stack of drink coasters that wirelessly connects to a smartphone. Using a proprietary app, people speak the label content and text-to-speech translates that first into text, and then into Braille words. These are printed out on a sticky strip that can be attached to whatever is being described.
At CES 2026 Unveiled, Mangolab showed off its Nemonic Dot printer — note the bright green label emerging from it, and behind it in this photo, pill bottles labeled in orange labels.
At the Unveiled booth, sample items easily mistaken for each other were labeled with Nemonic Dot strips, from salt and pepper shakers to painkillers and probiotics in identically-sized bottles. With the strips, they could be told apart.
Conventional electronic Braille label makers use direct text typing, either with the Perkins-style Braille button configuration or a standard QWERTY keyboard. The Nemonic Dot is an entirely voice-based interface: you say a word aloud, and it’s converted to text and then Braille on the smartphone app.
I watched as the Nemonic Dot app translated spoken words to text, though I saw it have a hard time discerning long, specific words of common medicines (acetominophen, paracetamol). It was hard to tell if the misfire was due to the din of the crowded floor or the app not hearing correctly — when it was closed and reopened, it comprehended and translated the spoken words correctly.
Conceivably, an external text-to-speech service could read this back to a blind user to ensure the word they’re printing is accurate, but the Nemonic Dot as I saw it seems conceived as a device for sighted people to print labels for their blind friends and family. While there’s nothing wrong with that, it does cater the device toward a different demographic than conventional Braille label makers — at least until more blind-friendly features are introduced in the Nemonic Dot app.
The Nemonic Dot has an expected price of $995, though it could change before the product goes on sale in the second quarter of 2026. Standard sticky tape refills cost $5, and owners can also buy firmer copper tape, though Mangoslab hasn’t yet finalized a price for that.
