Blind folks missing out on tablet action?

I don’t know which route I would choose if I could be blind or deaf – making me appreciate all my 5 senses so much more when I think about it. For those who were born blind or became blind during the course of a lifetime, life presents itself with another set of challenges, but none are insurmountable. While tablets have been doing pretty well in the market so far, how about making sure your tablet is able to cater to the blind or visually impaired?

Enter the new app which was developed by NMSU undergraduate Adam Duran, Stanford Assistant Professor Adrian Lew, and Stanford Doctoral candidate Sohan Dharmaraja as part of the Army High-Performance Computing Research Center’s (AHPCRC) yearly summer immersion course that takes a couple of months to complete. It basically enables the blind to use tablets thanks to a Braille eight-button keyboard, but there is another interesting element added to the system.

Users no longer need to locate the virtual buttons on a glass surface, which is super tough for the blind, but the individual keys themselves will orient to the correct finger whenever the user touches the screen. Since they’re customizable, they will cater to fat, thin, large and small fingers, even adapting to your typing style. Hopefully the prototype stage will be done and over with soon, and it might just put Braille writers out of business, you think so?

Edwin Kee
Categories: Gadgets, Tablets
Tags: braille, Tablet