We don't know what it's like to be blind, but we often suffer from
acute blogger's eye fatigue and would love nothing more to pound out our ramblings in a no-look manner -- if only we could read them back afterward without letting all those ultra-harsh light particles and / or waves back into our brains. Well, a
Braille display and Braille keyboard obviously solves that problem, and the BrailleNote Apex from HumanWare is purportedly the thinnest and lightest notetaker for the blind yet. It runs Windows CE 6, with a decent variety of accessible software, and is targeted at serious students and professionals, with 8GB of built-in flash storage, an SD card slot, WiFi, Ethernet, Bluetooth, and a trio of USB ports. No word on a price or release date, but it sounds pretty kitted out, and these things typically don't come cheap.
posted Nov 13th 2009 10:39PM
wow paul way to completely trivialize the blind in the first sentence
Seriously. If you've never been blind, of course you don't know what it's like to be blind. Duh!
Way to punish those who can see with the length of that first sentence too.
Hi Paul, I just got off the phone with sprint tech support (which I was on with them for 3 hrs) and I am having some problems with my hero. For starters I cannot receive texts or pic mail for 2 weeks now. Second, they finally got my voicemail working and I am finally getting my voicemails, but it does not notify me when I have a voicemail and it doesnt come through as visual voicemail. The only way I know that I have a voicemail is to go the the keypad and the number 1 key has a tiny envelope if I have a new vm. You seem very smart and I was wondering if you could possibly help me with my Hero. I love the phone, when it is working right. It just stopped working about 2 weeks ago.
I work for sprint and still cant get the appropriate help. Although the tech was very nice and seems truly dedicated. I can send texts, but cannot receive them, weird hu? Thank You so much for your help in this matter. Tina
so using any of the ports would be through touch and feel eh?
*waits for puns*
I'll show you trivializing the blind.
Hey blink! Want to play some video games with me... Oh wait your blind sorry.
/am I going to hell?
Did anyone other than me LOL at the VGA port on that thing?
But seriously why would you want to make a notetaker for the blind so small? I don't get it, I guess they do have hightened touch senses though.
VGA port, I know, the travesty of it! Even the blind deserve modern standards like HDMI, for shame BrailleNote.
That kid isn't blind, he's faking it so he can sleep in class!
Yeah, I was wondering about the VGA port as well.
@Ducman69
HA!
That actually looks kinda slick.
Yeah the shadow of Jason about to kill him? I would say so...
He never saw him coming.
YYYYYYYEAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH
kid is totally lookin at porn on that thing...
Where is the scree..oh wait.
You plug one into the vga port...does anyone else wonder why on earth that is there?
So not-blind people can see the notes?
well, maybe if he opened his eyes, he would actually see
lol
Sweetie, nobody likes a douche bag.
I don't know about that... Dane Cook seems to be pretty popular.
I can only imagine what they told the kid.
'OK buddy, just close your eyes and act like you cant see anything. Thats it! Freeze right there!'
Not cool!
Blind? What are you on about it's just a normal guy relaxing, playing some music on his miniature keyboard!?
Normal kid? Look at him! What are you? BLIND?!
what is that shadow man holding ??
That better not be Jason standing over a blind kid. Seriously?
That's just mean.
@Deo
That would actually be hilarious.
"Hello, who are you?"
*stab*stab*stab*
http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/5377/lookoutn.jpg
It's Jason with a kunai for some reason.
http://i625.photobucket.com/albums/tt333/SluttyMcNugget/BRAILLE.png
It looks like the kid is ready to die.
@Evan
oh god, win
I love seeing products like this.
LOL
Saw that kid at the mall yesterday playing the PS3 at Gamestop.
Did he have the same facial expression?
Ever since I was a young boy,
I hung out at GS in the mall.
From Soho down to Brighton
I must have seen them all.
but I ain't seen nothing like him
In any suburban mall.
That deaf, dumb and blind kid
Sure plays a mean pin ball!
he's a Playstation wizard
There has to be a twist.
A Playstation wizard,
S'got such a supple wrist
....
Why do they always put the Californian OC kid (not Outta Control OC but Cali O.C.) with surfer hairstyles to model for products??? Kid looks like a total douche. It'd would have been funnier if they put an Asian kid in his place, not that's uncalled for comedy.
-Jim Rome
Because everybody wants an Orange County kid.
Sorry to say.
it ain't his fault his hair's like that.. he doesn't know any better anyway.
he doesn't look like a douche, he looks cute :-)
why does engadget keep deleting what I try to post?
"Errrrrr!!!"
my bad, never mind.
Dude better open his eyes... I think Jason's in front of him...
Shouldn't he be wearing sunglasses?
Does it play Crysis?
blind people don't keep their eyes closed usually.....
he could be blinking
Blinking BOTH eyes at the same time? I think not.
you blink one eye at a time?
I hope your blind readers enjoy this blog post as much as I did.
I can see this will... (Opps.) I ASSUME this will be a big hit among the not-so-sighted.
Somebody's looking at porn.
That girl behind is pretty hot.
You deserve to be blind.
And joaqrobdel 'deserves' to get some counseling.
I only clicked the comments button to read the comic relief that was sure to ensue... Not dissaponted
oh and that first sentence is like a paragraph, almost passed out from lack of oxygen reading it. Hmmm that could be the basis for a lawsuit.
Holy shit, I was just laying in bed unable to sleep. I began to wonder what type of dreams blind people have. The thought began to give me headache.
I ended up sitting at my computer and did a search on blindness. After a little bit of reading I click engadget on my bookmarks bar, and this is the first post that pops up. This is just a coincidence, right?
I think the real question here is whether 1) it can run Crysis and 2) access brailleporn.com.
This shit can't be serious. How does a blind person browse 8GB of files? How does a blind person even view those files (except for audio and text)? How does a blind person use Windows, without a GUI but through braille? Why would a blind person need Wifi and bluetooth? How would a blind person find the USB ports and the device to plug into them, and why would they have the device in the first place? Why would a blind person need VGA on this device?, don't think a monitor will be much use to them. And really, how much software can there really be that works in braille?
Not trying to be an arsehole to the blind, just seriously wondering how and why they would actually use such a device.
It's made by the same company that puts braille on drive-thru ATMs.
You answered your own questions. Audio outputs with text-to-speech synthesizers are likely, and the files could probably be printed out on a braille printer. The computer has a VGA output, so a sighted person could probably organize the files and whatnot. A new text file is probably made by a specific button or each time the machine is turned on. It's not rocket science. It's a little short sighted to think that computers only have visual elements.
Also, Mike: If you were an ATM manufacturer, would you go through the trouble of making two different sets of buttons when one set could suit everyone's needs all the time? It's a simple cost saving element.
umm, u plug it into a pc, where u can listen through the text-to-speech appications? 8GB for some of them is not enough. I don't get why when ppl think someone is blind they cannot associate them with being technologically adept. My friend is blind, and he's a bigger geek than me.
seems like a lot of hassle though, would it not be easier for a blind person to stick to braille books? Computers weren't designed for blind people, trying to adapt them for their use is like trying to get a blind person to drive a car.
They need Bluetooth for their cell phone headsets when they are driving...duh!
Left, Left, Brake BRAKE! Screech...Clump.... Boinink...
I'm sure the blind will really utilize the vga part that's placed on the back of the device.
Is that kid having an orgasm in the picture.
No, he's lost in the music he's tapping out on that keyboard - "You are the sunshine of my liiiiffe..."
he looks like he's completely satisfied looking at some brail porn haha
dot, dot, dot, four dots in a square!
hahaha yeah, I heard they're all alike.
That kid looks pretty smug about his new BrailNote
It must be totally easy to take a nap in class when you're blind.
I had a professor who used one of these. She was so good at using it. The Bluetooth she used to connect a GPS receiver so she knows where she is if needed. Since it has a refreshable braille display she used to read quotes and take attendance with it. It really is a godsend for her. I think she did say that there were some settings her assistant had to set by connecting it to a monitor...
Take note, blind Engadget readers!
Why is he using my masturbation face?
do they really think a blind person would just be going about in school without some sort of mentor?
Yes. You ignorant idiot.
thinnest ?
http://www.eurobraille.fr/index.php?lg=uk&page=p-esys40-uk&title=Esys%2040
Great to see engadget covering assistive technologies!
For those of you who wonder why this device has a VGA port. This is a really important feature for the education market. Most blind children are taught by sighted teachers. The teacher is able to plug a video monitor into the VGA port and see a visual display of that the child is doing.
The reason is the device is small is so that it can be carried around. For a blind person this 'NoteTaker' category of device is designed to take the place of what pen and paper do for a sighted person. In addition to a word processor, it has a contact list, calendar, email client, and web browser among other features.
That kid is SO not blind.
He's clearly been run over by some sort of vehicle. Do you think a person with sight would wear a shirt with a gigantic blotch in the middle, and road-rash all over the shoulder?
Hey crack your jokes and miss the fact that this device ass rapes the blind at a price point of SIX THOUSAND TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS! (caps lock for wrath)
Oh it's thin all right. Thinly veiled exploitation.
screw you guys dissin the blind.
normal people suck
First thing I thought when I saw the picture was someones getting their knob polished.
As a blind person, let me say that the price is utter crap at $6,195. The more modern thing to do now is to get a netbook or laptop with speech. You can get a bluetooth braille display if you wish to read in braille. And yes, blind people don't have little mentors or midgets or whatever following them. And I don't get the idiot who said blind people wouldn't need WiFi. WTF? We just can't read the screen. There's still a lot of web to read and listen to. Even Youtube has lots of great audio.
Too bad he'll never be able to appreciate that rad shirt :(
I would have given a pun, but I see its already been done.
It appears he's using multitouch. This company's totally getting sued.
I think the VGA port is an exceptionally clever way to support the large number of visually impaired people who qualify as blind but can still see, some. I hope the software supports very large high contrast displays, making the device a note-reader both visual and auditory.
If I were designing it, I'd go ahead and record the audio and interweave it with the notes (like the Livescribe pen does).
He seems to really enjoy that Braille.
"Ohh man, that's good braille."
That kid is soooo stoned.
This is awesome!