Vibrating touchscreens allow Braille reading

Touchscreen handsets may be the talk of the town, but they are useless to the visually impaired. Software developed by Jussi Rantala and his colleagues at the University of Tampere in Finland attempts to address that by bringing Braille to touch-enabled mobile devices. The team installed the software on the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet with a piezoelectric layer that 'displays' a raised dot on the touchscreen with a single intense vibration and the absence of a dot with a longer and weaker pulse.

Two methods of presenting Braille were devised by the team. The first requires users to swipe their fingers across the screen to read each of the six dots in the 2x3 matrix in Braille.

The second method generates a sequence of six dots, each 360 milliseconds apart, when the user taps and holds on a character. Volunteers who tested the software were more comfortable with this option, although it took some getting used to.

Source: CNET

Google shows off eyes-free touchscreen dialing

Accessibility is a problem for the iPhone. With the device its lack of physical controls, it is virtually impossible for somebody who is vision-impaired to use the phone. Other touchscreen smart phones suffer from the same problem, so a few smartypants engineers at Google have come up with a clever way of dealing with the problem. The system works by mimicking the traditional phone keypad, with the number five in the center and the other numbers arrayed around it. But since the screen has no physical keys, the software pops up the keypad wherever the user touches it. Wherever the finger makes contact becomes a five; slide the finger upwards and release, and it’s a two; slide it downwards, it’s an eight, etc. The user can enter a whole phone number by tapping, sliding, and releasing, all without having to look at the screen, since wherever the user taps becomes the keypad.

It’s a perfect embodiment of that old adage about turning a weakness into a strength: the downside of a touchscreen device is the lack of physical controls—but that also means you can put the controls wherever you want. It’s a simple yet brilliant solution to dealing with accessibility on the touchscreen smartphones.

Of course, given that Google has developed this system, it’s uncertain whether or not Apple could take advantage of it for the iPhone. But the idea of making the user control the interface based on where they make contact with the touchscreen could still be a powerful idea. Imagine a visually-impaired user not having to try and figure out where the iPhone’s “Slide to unlock” bar is. Instead, they simply place their finger on the touchscreen, swipe it across, and the phone is unlocked.

Google’s spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to make a touchscreen interface work for vision-impaired users; the company has launched a whole Eyes-Free Shell project devoted to exploring this and other ideas, like talking dialers and voice-synthesized directions. And since the Android OS is open source, all the code is available online.

It seems likely that Apple is working on its own accessibility solutions, though it’s impossible to know since it’s enshrouded in the Cupertino cone of silence. But hopefully the Apple engineers have come up with some similarly smart ideas for dealing with the challenges so many people face day-in, day-out.

Source Mac World

Reading Rights Coalition Urges Authors to Allow Everyone Access to E-books

The Reading Rights Coalition, which represents people who cannot read print, will protest the threatened removal of the text-to-speech function from e-books for the Amazon Kindle 2 outside the Authors Guild headquarters in New York City at 31 East 32nd Street on April 7, 2009, from noon to 2:00 p.m. The coalition includes the blind, people with dyslexia, people with learning or processing issues, seniors losing vision, people with spinal cord injuries, people recovering from strokes, and many others for whom the addition of text-to-speech on the Kindle 2 promised for the first time easy, mainstream access to over 245,000 books.

When Amazon released the Kindle 2 electronic book reader on February 9, 2009, the company announced that the device would be able to read e-books aloud using text-to-speech technology. Under pressure from the Authors Guild, Amazon has announced that it will give authors and publishers the ability to disable the text-to-speech function on any or all of their e-books available for the Kindle 2.

Dr. Marc Maurer, President of the National Federation of the Blind, said: "The blind and print-disabled have for years utilized text-to-speech technology to read and access information. As technology advances and more books move from hard-copy print to electronic formats, people with print disabilities have for the first time in history the opportunity to enjoy access to books on an equal basis with those who can read print. Authors and publishers who elect to disable text-to-speech for their e-books on the Kindle 2 prevent people who are blind or have other print disabilities from reading these e-books. This is blatant discrimination and we will not tolerate it."

Mike Shuttic, president of the Association on Higher Education and Disability said: "AHEAD envisions educational and societal environments that value disability and embody equality of opportunity. This vision of AHEAD is directly aligned with the efforts of this coalition. Although much rhetoric is made about potential obstacles and problems that exist, the basic goal is clear and simple -- access for everyone. And why create something that prevents it?"

Mitch Pomerantz, president of the American Council of the Blind, said: "Removing the text-to-speech features closes the door on an innovative technological solution that would make regular print books available to tens of thousands of individuals who are blind or visually impaired."

Andrew Imparato, President and Chief Executive Officer for the American Association of People with Disabilities said: "It is outrageous when a technology device shuts out people with all kinds of disabilities. AAPD works to remove barriers to accessibility and usability in technology, and we don't expect to see people with disabilities singled out by having to pay more for access. New technologies, such as electronic books, should be available to everyone regardless of disability."

Paul Schroeder, vice president of programs and policy for the American Foundation for the Blind, said: "Those of us with print disabilities have long dreamed of a world in which books and media are available to us at the same time as everyone else. The Kindle 2 offers that possibility for the first time. We hope publishers and authors come to see that text-to-speech is simply an alternative means of access to print."

Dr. Peter Blanck, chairman and university professor at Burton Blatt Institute at Syracuse University, said: "As electronic books become the norm, denying universal access will result in more and more people with disabilities being left out of education, employment, and the societal conversation. We will all suffer from the absence of their participation and contribution to the debates that occupy us as a society."

While the Kindle 2 is not currently accessible to blind users, Amazon recently announced on its Kindle 2 blog that it is currently at work on making the device's navigational features accessible to the blind.

SOURCE: National Federation of the Blind