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Does the iPhone shaft the blind?
I spent a good hour or so this morning without my glasses. The little plastic nosie-thing fell off and I had to wait while a new plastic nosie-thing got installed. During that time, I was pretty much blind as a bat--assuming that bats are legally blind, extremely myopic, astigmatic, and can only see the world as one huge blur. So I got to thinking. The new iPhone, with its completely sleek surface, how useless will that thing be for the visually impaired? Me, I can usually stick my eye up reaaaaaally close to something (assuming I can get my nose out of the way) and see what's going on but for anyone with worse vision (or a less foldable nose), the iPhone is going to be really hard to use. (Contrast this with the 5G iPod, which I can operate by touch, often in my pocket.) So I googled for blind and iPhone, but didn't find much out there on Web search, and just a few hits here and there on blog search. Surely, there must be some usability experts out there willing to weigh in on the Universal Access aspects of the iPhone and the lack thereof. Thoughts?
Blind Turin residents to be guided by GPS
According to Britain's Telegraph newspaper, a select few blind residents of Turin, Italy have been tagged with GPS receivers to help them find their way around more easily, with additional individuals set to join the trials in the coming months. Unlike some other GPS-based systems for the blind (like the one pictured here), the one being put to use in Turin, dubbed Easy Walk, doesn't allow individuals to be completely independent, instead requiring them to phone a call center on their cellphone for assistance. The operator then simply tracks the individual's location using the GPS receiver and guides them to their destination over the phone. On the upside, the system will be free to all users, with costs payed for by the government. Eventually, the program will include all 3,000 blind residents of the Piedmont region of Italy, although they won't just be confined to strolling around their hometown, with the system able to watch their back as they travel across all of Italy and France.[Via Textually.org]
Japanese inventors debut musical six-key keyboard for the blind
Inventors in Japan have just created something which, from the scant description we've found online, appears to be along the lines of a stenographer's keyboard, but for blind people. Yazaki electronics has just built a one-pound keyboard with six keys that lets blind people take notes, storing the data on what we presume is a flash drive of some kind. Apparently when you type, the keyboard will speak each letter as a tone as you input them, and can be configured to type in Japanese, Chinese or Roman script (no word on how or if you can do multiple alphabets). The keyboard can then be hooked up to a computer (no idea on what kind of file it outputs), so that you can download your transcripts. Of course, all those features don't come cheap by any means -- we're talking ¥200,000 ($1,750), here, folks.
Geddes Reader DIY reading aid for the partially sighted
It may not be as portable or as flashy as some reading devices for the blind or partially sighted, but this new reading aid hack also doesn't cost upwards of $4,000. Created by 86-year old Edinburgh-resident Les Geddes, a retiree who used to develop weapons guidance systems, the homebrew solution is basically just a high-resolution video camera connected to a TV; it seems to get the job done, enlarging anything you swipe it over to a readable size, and it can be yours for nothing more than a donation of £50 (just under $100) -- presumably, it's a bring-your-own-display deal. In true DIY-fashion, Geddes also says he intends to make the plans for the device, dubbed the Geddes Reader, available on the Internet, though we're guessing some of you can throw caution to the wind and whip one up without a manual.[Via Scotsman.com]
UPenn scientists create replacement retina on a chip
Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have developed a new silicon chip that could be "embedded directly into the eye and connected to the nerves that carry signals to the brain's visual cortex," reports New Scientist. The chip aims to help people suffering from retinitis pigmentosa, which is the gradual death of one's retinal cells, those really useful bits of organic matter that convert light into nerve impulses for the brain to process. Previous attempts at solving this biological conundrum have often gone the route of using a video camera usually connected to a tiny computer to process the signal, which is then attached to the optic nerve. If Penn's research works, it would let this chip be directly implanted into the eye -- with a direct connection to the optic nerve -- removing the need for an external camera. Even better, this new version also mimics the way a healthy retina adjusts to light intensity, contrast, and even movement. The next step is to reducing the size and power consumption of the chip before clinical trials can get going.[Via New Scientist]
Solar-powered wristwatch, necklace for the blind
While there's definitely no shortage of watches that serve a greater purpose than merely telling time, Jeonjun Cho, a sophomore at Kyungki University in Korea, has developed a timepiece that does nothing more than display the current time to the blind. His braille clock collection has both aesthetes and utilitiarians covered, as the sleek silver finish makes for a snazzy piece of 2001-esque jewelry, and the solar-powered braille ticker allows the blind to check the time without consulting their RFID-enabled robot tagalong. The necklace and watch each share the same readout, which is composed of simple "dots, lines, and planes," all basic factors of creating braille numbers. So if you've got a visually impaired pal who hasn't picked up a talking cellphone to keep him / her on schedule, these fashionable timepieces could be just the thing to keep things on track.
SWAN: System for Wearable Audio Navigation
A team of Georgia Tech researchers have devised a wearable computer system that promises to help blind people navigate unfamiliar areas, and please the acronym police as well. Like most prototypes, the the SWAN (System for Wearable Audio Navigation) is pretty bulky in its current form, with a laptop, GPS, inertial sensors, pedometer, RFID tags, RF sensors, a compass, and other gear all stuffed into a backpack, although they're apparently already working on a smaller version. To get navigation information to the wearer, the SWAN employs a pair of "bonephones" (also developed by Georgia Tech), which send sounds to the person using bone conduction, letting them keep their ears free to hear what's going on around them. Instead of using traditional voice navigation, however, the SWAN uses what the researchers call "3D audio cues," which consist of navigational beacons that the person is supposed to walk towards, and secondary sounds informing them of nearby objects or changes in walking surfaces. Makes the UltraCane seem a little old-fashioned, no?[Via Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends]
Electronics-free $10 Braille writer
If you've ever needed a surefire way to impress a professor, besting his estimates by 80 percent on a project is probably a safe bet. Four mechanical engineering students at The Johns Hopkins University were tasked with developing a simple tool to write in Braille for less than $50, and no electronic components could be used; their portable writing invention checked in at around $10 apiece when mass produced. Typically, computer-assisted and typewriter-style composition is quite costly and isn't very practical for, say, busy blind professionals trying to write on-the-go. Braille letters are traditionally formed by creating up to six impressions -- better known as bumps -- into sequenced cells that form words. The students' writer has six buttons with corresponding pins that can be depressed simultaneously, which makes filling in cells substantially quicker than the traditional "one bump at a time" method. The team recently presented the device to the National Federation of the Blind where board members saw a great deal of promise for the handheld tool, and although commercialization plans have yet to be envisioned, this advancement in Braille transcription is definitely an eye-opener.[Via MedGadget]
Colorblind gaming or: Table Tennis is impossibly hard!
Around one in ten males and one in two hundred females are unable to discern the difference between some or all colors that other people can distinguish. Like most other people with the disability, I've been colorblind (or, to use the politically correct term, have had color sight deficiency) since birth. I find it hard, and sometimes impossible, to tell the difference between shades of red, green and brown, blue and purple and oranges and yellows. As my optician told me when I was young, this disability means that I can't work in a paint factory or be a pilot. What he didn't tell me was that I'd have trouble playing friggin' computer games! As you probably know, the Xbox 360 features several colored buttons. Usually I can tell the difference between these buttons (the problem isn't so bad that I can't tell the difference between the equivalent of red and green at traffic lights). However, there's one game that has caused a problem: Rockstar's Table Tennis. A fundamental part of the gameplay is being able to respond to the opposing player's spin on the ball. This is represented by one of the colors which are also found on the gamepad. Blue for left spin, red for right spin, green for forward spin and yellow for back spin. Unfortunately, I can barely tell the difference between the red, green and yellow on a standard definition display. On a high definition screen the green and yellow are still nearly identical to my eyes. This isn't usually much of a problem during normal play (besides, I can always just press the green button), but on the training levels where you are taught how to spin the ball, I found the task physically impossible. I literally had to guess which spin the computer was giving the ball! Table Tennis has the hardest training level of any game, at least for me. Since completing the training levels is an Xbox 360 achievement, it's also possibly the hardest achievement there is. It took me around 3-4 hours and dozens of reattempts to get the 5 points given to you after you complete training.
Braille via SMS: Samsung's Touch Messenger
The Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) has just announced their IDEA 2006 awards for excellence in design, and paddle-shaped phones appear to be all the rage this year -- Samsung has been tapped in the "Design Explorations" category with their oddball Touch Messenger device for the blind. Typically, SMS-capable devices for the blind have involved text to speech, which, as IDSA points out, is a bummer for privacy not to mention generally defeating the purpose of text messaging to begin with. No word on production prospects, but IDSA does mention that the Touch Messenger "gives blind users in China an affordable, user-friendly cell phone experience on par with sighted users," so it sounds like we can expect this or a similar device in the pipeline -- at least for China.[Via Telecoms Korea]
Kurzweil set to unveil portable reader for the blind
Even though we've seen a ton of products designed to aid the visually-impaired in their daily lives, technology still has a long way to go before disabled folks are able to enjoy a completely unrestricted lifestyle, which is why inventor/visionary Ray Kurzweil has spent the last quarter-century building devices that make reading easier for the blind. His latest invention, called the K-NFB, is basically a five megapixel digital camera attached to the back of a Windows Mobile 5.0-powered PDA, which is loaded with software that uses optical character recognition and text-to-speech technology to read aloud the words contained in user-captured photos. Once it's called into action, the $4,860 device supplies the operator with an initial "situation report" that attempts to describe whatever's in the camera's field of vision; if the report indicates that the desired text is within range, owners can then choose to snap a photo and listen to the resulting translation. Although the K-NFB is scheduled to be released soon by the UK's Sight & Sound, several technical issues -- most importantly, the software's difficulty in understanding inverted (white-on-black) text -- still have to be ironed out before it's available to the public.[Thanks, Megan]
MIT's $4,000 "seeing machine" for the legally blind
MIT's got a new machine in the works that will offer some discrete seeing abilities to the 1.3 million legally blind in the US without the need for invasive retinal implants. Though it's not portable and doesn't (yet) support video feeds, the 12 x 6 x 6-inch "seeing machine" developed by Elizabeth Goldring, a senior fellow at MIT's Center for Advanced Visual Studies, enables users to control virtual 3D environments, view images, or read documents by way of an LED eyepiece that projects images directly onto the retinas of those with limited vision. (An example of what Goldring apparently see is blown up onscreen above.) We assume the consumer application of such a device is only eventual, but for now it remains with at MIT for development, so, um, keep an eye out.
Implant to cure blindness?
We've run a few of these before, but if you think we're into otherwise unnecessary implantables, don't even get us started on implantables that enhance sensory perception, or restore senses where there were once none. The New Scientist has a writeup of a new kind of solar powered 1.5 millimeter x 15 micrometer retinal implant that could start restoring vision to the blind by using solar cells to trigger lead zirconate titanate piezoelectric actuators that stimulate optical neurotransmitters. Yeah, we slapped our foreheads too, it was so simple. You'll have Laxman Saggere of the University of Illinois at Chicago to thank when his invention is complete, though; we can't wait to give Stevie a peek -- the man wrote Songs in the Key of Life, can't he just get a peek?
