Blind taking pictures?? What about a comb for a bald headed.

derek168

Watch out, this is actually a camera designed to take pictures of the inside of the brains of the visually impaired!

robpruitt

It creates a relief image? If you take a picture of something sharp, wouldn't it stab you?

Munch the BanNail

@Emiat: oh take it easy will u. the iphone is JUST some touchscreen device.

001

"and type on the iPhone"

Couldn't that just be use any touchscreen device?
What makes the iPhone so blind unfriendly that it deserves priority.

Emiat

I think this is really cool, but obviously I wouldn't know just how much a blind person can derive from a brail sequence.

I imagine there would have to be so many bumps to give the user a good idea of what the photo was of.

Gavbot

I'm still confused at how it works, but I'm glad to see more and more technology helping the less-fortunate.

cowpop

How many megapixels?

Junginator

I hope it works. Sounds like it's going to be in production for quite some time. Although, I'm not blind there are others who are and I think this would be cool for them.

Adisah

FAIL.
FAIL.
FAIL.
FAIL.

thomusvoo

Awesome!

This idea should progress into a live display that blind people could you at all times. It would put the image on a dynamic alloy screen that was able to change shape. Then as newer models come out, the speed and resolution would increase.

se7a7n7

@Munch the BanNail: Well they aren't knifes you know :P

Mike918

...so back in 1897, a disgraced snake oil salesman wanders back into Tuscumbia, Alabama, and says, "Ok folks, I'll be square. The snake oil was bullshit. To make things right, I offer you this," and he holds up a white box with an orange dot in the middle, "THIS!" he exlcaims, "is a camera for the blind."

And Helen Keller rejoiced.

coketown

@001:
Actually this is what the Iphone is: "When the iPhone was first announced, CEO Steve Jobs spewed enough BS to cover a football field full of babies 3 feet deep in bullshit, which sounds cool because he could have potentially murdered a football field full of babies, but he passed on this opportunity by introducing the phone instead. He claimed that the phone was three devices in one: an iPod, a phone, and an "Internet communications device." Oooh, an Internet communications device?! AWESOME!"

Its an internet communications device, you dolt.
[www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net]
ps I'm actually 20/10 - I can read the bottom most line clearly.

CrashingOut

Wait wait wait wait wait, I'm blind, and I'm typing perfectly fine with this specially cool keyboard, I thought that I could do anything...My cousin said that, they make clouds with braille on them, and that I'm special and I can do anything. HAVE I BEEN LIED TO GIZMODO, IS MY LIFE A SHAM. WHAT AM I GOING TO DO WITH THE CESSNA I JUST PURCHASED?! I'm a blind impulse buyer, I admit; I haven't seen the plane, but he said I didn't need to if I gave him all my money via Western Bank transfer. He won't answer my calls though, is he getting my C208?

CrashingOut

Not to nitpick, but the blind can already take pictures. It's just that most of them aren't very good.

Oh god I hope no one who's blind reads this and gets offended. Helen Keller will never let me hear the end of it no matter how many times I try to explain it to her.

mhlaxp

This is awesome!

@mhlaxp: It's not about taking pictures, it's about a new tool which allows the blind to "see" them.

FritzLaurel

@FritzLaurel: if it's just about allowing the blind to "see" the pictures, couldn't they just develop a printing technique similar to embossing with more depths and texture or something? Instead of creating that relief image on a crazy expensive camera, why not just create the relief image on a piece of cardboard instead?

wildfire759

@Emiat: "What makes the iPhone so blind unfriendly that it deserves priority."

It's on Gizmodo so it deserves priority. Always. Period.

Where have you been?

GadgetPlay

Oliver Sacks's book "An Anthropologist on Mars" (see [www.oliversacks.com]) describes how blind people perceive the world differently from sighted people. I think the idea is interesting, but not sure how a blind person would really interpret the raised image. I take photos on my vacation so I can re-experience the vacation later when I look at the photos. Because I process the world visually, just an image of a sunrise is enough to bring back the experience. Now, imagine you are a blind person "looking" at a sunrise over the ocean. You can feel the change in warmth, feel the breeze, hear the grass and gulls, taste the salt, and so forth. All of these sensations make up your memory of that moment. My guess is that a textured image of that sunrise would pale in comparison to all those other remembered sensations. In other words, I am not sure that a textured image would recall the experience in the same way that a photo serves a sighted person. Any blind commenters want to chip in here? What do you think?

craighyatt

@Munch the BanNail: on the bright side, it adds an extra dimension to porno movies...

craighyatt

Does anyone else think this kind of looks like an ad for "HeadOn"?

Git Em SteveDave displays attention-grabbing vanity

@Gavbot: Existing Braille display tech -- and Braille in general -- has sufficient DPI to form intelligible tactile images. What I am curious about, as a totally blind user, is just how exactly it gets any kind of colour or shading across. Current embossers (Braille printers) are able to vary the intensity of dots to give an idea of colour (the sharper the dot, the brighter the colour is assumed to be) however, I am unsure if anyone has gotten this technology crammed into standard Braille displays. Another issue is price. Braille displays usually run $80+ per eight-dot cell and there would obviously have to be a sufficiently-sized grid of cells to get a picture across. This would need to be larger than say an lcd on a digital camera as the fingers, while sensitive for many things, don't have the fine ability to differentiate between tiny details that eyes do. @derek168: Shame they don't offer brain substitutes for those without. I'd like a picture of my girlfriend rendered accessible just as much as the next guy.

@Git Em SteveDave displays attention-grabbing vanity: I was thinking more of Johnny Carson as Carnac the Magnificent...

craighyatt

@Git Em SteveDave displays attention-grabbing vanity: I was thinking the exact same thing.

"PhotoOn: Apply directly to the forehead!"

@craighyatt: Did you not read the part where it records three seconds of sound after the picture is taken? So that textured picture of a sunset at the beach would have the sound of waves and maybe bird calls. Just because visual images induces sensory memory in you doesn't mean it works the same way in others.

Personally, I think this is completely awesome.

@: I wasn't dissing the idea... just suggesting another way to look at it. I was using myself as an example of how a sighted person perceives the world and Sacks's book as an example of how a blind person sees things. I was wondering (leaving aside the audio recording aspect for simplicity) if a blind person--never having seen a tree from a distance--would interpret raised dots representing a tree the same as a sighted person. And then, getting a little more abstract, would a blind person use the image captured as raised dots the same way that I would use a photograph. Again, not saying it's a bad idea, just wanting to explore it further.

craighyatt

@craighyatt: "A pope, a soap, and a dope." Rips open envelope. "John Paul, Ivory, and Cris Angel."

Hey-oh!

Git Em SteveDave displays attention-grabbing vanity

there is a 1991 movie with Hugo Weaving and Russel Crowe called "Proof" when Weaving is a blind man who takes photographs. It's an interesting concept in the movie... IMDB listing: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102721/ NOT to be confused with Crowe's 2000 "Proof of Life" (or his 1994 film "Sum of Us" where he plays a 'poof') -- Charles Spolyar Minneapolis, MN

ValdisNeleus