People who have been blind since a young age can sometimes learn to develop a sort of low-grade echolocation. This technique, used by the likes of Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Ronnie Milsap, and Ben Underwood, works much the same way as it does in bats and dolphins. But people who have just recently lost their sight can’t harness this ability innately. They need the vOICe to do it for them.
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Sure, cellphones for those who have issues with sight aren’t new, but Odin Mobile is aiming to be the very first US mobile carrier specifically tailored to improve accessibility for the visually impaired. When it launches in late July, the T-Mobile MVNO will offer Qualcomm’s Ray low vision-friendly smartphone for $300 — which is slated to arrive at Amazon on June 6th — and more affordable handsets from Emporia. Odin Mobile also plans to send user guides in Word format and HTML via email, and promises that its customer support team will know the ins and outs of the accessibility features in its phones. As if that weren’t enough, the firm vows to donate two percent of its revenue from voice and text services to organizations that help the visually impaired. Head past the break for the press release or hit the source link to peruse the company’s devices and plans.
Source: Odin Mobile
Dustin Adams, a Ph.D student at the University of California at Santa Cruz, has teamed up with colleagues at his school in order to craft an app that helps visually impaired users line up the ideal snapshot. The project started out as a quiz, asking 54 people with varying degrees of ocular impairment what they found most difficult about taking photos. From there, he essentially boiled that down into requirements for a smartphone program. For starters, the app does away with a conventional shutter button, instead relying on an upward swipe gesture to grab a frame.
Moreover, it integrates face detection and voice accessibility, enabling the phone itself to talk to the photographer and alert him / her as to how many faces are detected and in focus. The app also captures a 30-second audio clip whenever the camera mode is activated, which helps remind users of what was going on during the capture of a shot. Unfortunately, there aren’t any screenshots or videos of the app in action just yet, but that’s scheduled to change when it’s formally unveiled at the Pervasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments conference in Greece later this month.
Via: NewScientist
The latest upgrade to the iPhone and iPad version of Amazon’s Kindle reading app brings a bunch of new features aimed at blind and visually impaired users. At the top of the list is the ability to read aloud 1.8 million Kindle Store titles, with help from Apple’s VoiceOver technology. The update also brings better library and book navigation and search, as well as features like notes, highlights, bookmarks, font size, background color and brightness. Standard Kindle features like X-Ray, End Actions and sharing via Facebook and Twitter are also made more accessible through the update. Amazon’s promised a similar update for non-iOS versions of the app at some point in the future — in the meantime, a full list of new features can be found in a press release after the break.
Filed under: Amazon
Check out these awesome window shades that put spaceships on your window and at the same time help isolate you from sunlight, with only your action figures and DVD collections to keep you company. I kid. I would love to have these on my window too, since I’m a huge science fiction nerd too.
You can choose from a variety of blinds that feature wireframe images of some of the most famous ships in sci-fi.
There is a TARDIS, the Millennium Falcon, the USS Enterprise, a Klingon Bird of Prey, a BSG inspired Viper and Boba Fett’s Slave I ship. But which do you choose? They are all amazing. Maybe if you have enough windows, you can have them all.
They cost £99 (~$152 USD) and up over at DirectBlinds, depending on the size of your windows, and any options you add.
Now that you’ve seen these, you’ll want to redecorate and try to convince your wife that spaceships will look good in your windows.
It’s not every day that science and crazy brain implants lead to the generation of what is essentially a new sense, but it is that day today. Scientists from Duke University have found a way to make rats “feel” invisible infrared light and someday that same tech could give sight to the blind, or give us humans extras senses for fun. More »
Tommy Edison, the positively radiant blind film critic, is back to explain how a blind person uses everybody’s favorite instant photo sharing service: Instagram. He’s explained how he used his iPhone before and what color meant to him but his use of Instagram might be the most impressive thing yet. Reminder: Tommy Edison has been blind since birth and yet, his pictures are as good as yours! His captions are hilarious! He hashtags! Seriously, check out how he uses Instagram above and take a peek at his Instagram feed here. Instafollow. More »
Tommy Edison, the wonderful blind film critic who once showed us how he used an iPhone, has a new video describing something nearly impossible for blind people to understand: color. What’s great is that even though Edison doesn’t understand the concept of color, colors still have meaning to him. Watch him describe what red, blue, orange, black and white. It’s awesome to see color from such a completely different perspective. [YouTube via Laughing Squid] More »
Scientists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have developed a prototype system that could one day aid the congenitally blind by converting video into auditory cues. The “Sonar Vision” works in a similar way to a bat’s echolocation system, but instead of chirping, uses a video camera embedded in a pair of glasses. A laptop or smartphone then converts the images into sound, which is transmitted to a headset. After 70 hours or so of training, that allowed users to identify objects like faces or houses, position objects in space and even identify individual letters. Surprisingly, researchers also found that after only several hours using the device, regions of the cerebral cortex dedicated to sight became activated for the first time in the congenitally sightless. That could possibly let doctors “wake up” regions of the brain never before used, according to the team, “even after a lifetime of blindness.”
[Image credit: Wikimedia Commons]
Filed under: Cellphones, Laptops, Science, Alt
Via: Ubergizmo
Source: CEA
Smartphones have made juggling multiple single-purpose gadgets a thing of the past for many, but the blind and visually impaired often use a raft of devices built with eyes-free use in mind. Qualcomm and Project Ray, however, are aiming to consolidate phone calls, text messaging with voice read-out, navigation, object recognition, audio book reading and more for the visually impaired in a system built on an off-the-shelf Android phone. To navigate the smartphone, users leverage a handful of simple finger movements that can be started at any point on the handset’s touch screen. Voice prompts and vibration provide feedback to users, and the UI adapts to usage patterns and preferences. Currently, Ray devices have access to Israel’s Central Library for the Blind and are being tested by 100 folks in the country. For the full lowdown, head past the break for the press release.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile
Qualcomm develops eyes-free smartphone for the blind and visually impaired, calls it Ray originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Oct 2012 03:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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