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Posts with tag Braille

Former professor creates vibrating Braille handset

Braille phones in and of themselves aren't all that unique, but a former professor (who just so happens to be completely blind) from Tsukuba University of Technology has crafted a variant that jumps and jives. Dubbed the world's first vibrating Braille cellphone, the device is programmed to emit pulses depending on which key is pressed; more specifically, a pair of terminals attached to the handset "vibrate at a specific rate to create a message." Those currently involved with the project are now toiling to make the keypad-to-vibration converters smaller, but there's no word just yet on whether the technology will be picked up commercially.

[Via FarEastGizmos]

Vmedia aside, Spice planning ultra-cheap phones, too


We'd personally spend the extra few bucks to pick up the MOTOFONE's e-ink display, but mad love to Spice for what they're trying to do here nonetheless. The Indian carrier announced a couple other handsets in addition to its crazy Vmedia disc-playing prototype at Mobile World Congress last week, both of which will retail for under $20. "The People's Phone" (which we hope is less painful than The People's Elbow) is about as simple as they come, forgoing a display altogether in an effort to really boil it down to the basics, while The Braille Phone appears to be virtually the same thing with braille simply added to the keys. It seems unlikely that the models will find their way too far outside India proper, though they sure would make interesting backup phones, wouldn't they?

[Via textually.org]

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]




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