How could a blind person ever possibly dial on a touchscreen? Really, any ideas? Google engineers T.V. Raman and Charles Chen have developed a system that’s so simple it’s almost embarrassing.
Instead of making the user find the right place to press their finger, the engineers made the software find the user’s finger. Wherever the user touches when dialing becomes 5, and from here things are pretty obvious. Swipe up for 2, down for 8 and way down for 0.
For those watching the clip, skip to about 2 minutes in for the actual demo. And if you’re interested in finding out more about how Google is making Android accessible to those who can’t see a touchscreen, the link at the end of this post will lead you to a bunch more YouTube demos of their Eyes-Free Android Project. [YouTube via NYTimes]
Muhieddine el Kaissi
Sunday, April 5, 2009 at 3:17 AMHi
I saw at the app store an Application that also target blind and it has been released yesterday too!!
The app name is “A Special Phone”
Thanks
hmm
Sunday, April 5, 2009 at 9:02 AMNice.. how does one dial zero if they’ve touched the ’5′ position too low on the screen? where will the delete key be?