Dejong’s field of vision isn’t totally black; he can distinguish light from dark, and had continued to take photos with the help of an editing assistant. But VoiceOver, which reads back anything displayed on the iPhone, has allowed him to use the (low-end, Dejong admits) camera and certain photo editing apps like Camerabag and TiltShift even without sight.

“With the iPhone and a lot of the photography apps that a lot of people are using, I have my entire workflow, and I can do it in five minutes,” Dejong said. “In this way, the iPhone is a remarkable gift. I’ve had it for three weeks now, and it has really opened up my world, apart from the photography.”

It’s a pretty interesting story, and Wired’s account goes into more depth with other blind photography techniques. I’d never really thought about blind photography before, but for someone like Dejong, for whom photography had been a vital part, I can see how VoiceOver and other new tools would be a godsend. [Wired]

This particular concept was designed by Seon-Keun Park, Byung-Min Woo, Sun-Hye Woo & Jin-Sun Park, and it uses an electroactive polymer to raise the braille dots when a charge is passed through certain areas of the screen.

And for those familiar with braille, it’s probably easier than listening to Kindle’s disputed text-to-speech robot.

[Yanko Design]

The National Federation of the Blind’s Imbroglio with the Author’s Guild and their distaste for the Kindle 2’s text-to-speech function is heating up. Today they took it to the Guild’s own doorstep here in NYC.

Basically the story is this: the Author’s Guild raised issue with the Kindle 2’s new robotic text-to-speech feature, which can read any Kindle book aloud in a synthesised voice—naturally, a feature that would be an absolute delight for the vision impaired. The Author’s Guild, however, saw things differently, stating that eBooks are not sold with “performance” rights and that the Kindle’s read-aloud feature would cut into the sales of audio books. And last month, Amazon caved to the Guild, giving individual publishers the ability to disable the text-to-speech reader for specific books.

As you might imagine, the blind community is quite upset at this clear case of business interests getting in the way of the blind or vision impaired to have a gigantic library of Kindle books at their fingertips. I can’t really see any part of the Author’s Guild’s argument that’s not pretty evil and ridiculous, and as our own resident book author Jason Chen says: “As a guy who’s written a book—however shitty it may be—if the Kindle’s TTS helps just one blind person, then it’s worth it.”

Everything was of course peaceful and contained right in front of the Author’s Guild’s seventh floor offices on 32nd street on Manhattan’s east side. They had a pretty fantastic march ring set up, with many folks leading those who could not see at all in the ring, and sighted people whose job was to tell the marchers when to turn. Several seeing eye dogs joined in expressing their distaste.

The Author’s guild maintains that making works available to the blind is one of their highest priorities, but they’ve handled the situation poorly thus far—to wit, their first proposal for solving the problem was having blind Kindle owners register their devices so they could purchase audio rights to their e-books. You don’t ever ask the disabled to join a special registry, especially for something like this. They said in their statement:

“The Authors Guild will gladly be a forceful advocate for amending contracts to provide access to voice-output technology to everyone. We will not, however, surrender our members’ economic rights to Amazon or anyone else. The leap to digital has been brutal for print media generally, and the economics of the transition from print to e-books do not look as promising as many assume. Authors can’t afford to start this transition to digital by abandoning rights.”

Clearly, tensions are still high. The statement continues:

“Today’s protest is unfortunate and unnecessary. We stand by our offer, first made to the Federation’s lawyer a month ago and repeated several times since, to negotiate in good faith to reach a solution for making in-print e-books accessible to everyone. We extend that same offer to any group representing the disabled.”

We’re all about getting people paid for their work, but to cite lost royalties and audio book revenues as the main reason to deprive the blind community from the full Kindle archive —which, if you remember, Jeff Bezos hopes will soon include every book ever published—seems kind of ridiculous.

If you would like to support the National Federation of the Blind, you can do so at their website, and more can be read on the Author’s Guild’s position on their site. Readingrights.org also has an informed discussion of the issue.

We imagine the announcement of the text-to-speech feature on the Kindle 2 was amazing for the blind, which is why the fact that the Author’s Guild wants to shut it down pisses them off so.

The National Federation of the Blind is protesting right now (or maybe just finished protesting) outside the Author’s Guild HQ in NYC. Check out this site for more details.

In my own view, if I’m understanding this correctly, it’s a fairly petty distinction that the Author’s Guild is making in terms of having an eBook and having the eBook being read out loud, boiling down to the point that they want more money for the right to “perform” the book.

As a guy who’s written a book—however shitty it may be—if the Kindle’s TTS helps just one blind person, then it’s worth it.

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]

Feel-good sentiment aside, a project like this would face some huge hurdles. Not only would the screenreading and interface apps likely require a good deal of research and development, but their deep integration into the iPhone’s OS would almost certainly violate the App Store rules, which can and one day will be construed to mean that Apple despises blind people. Right? RIGHT? Controversy! [Yanko]

As a product, the Moshi is pretty focused. There’s no radio or MP3 support, and the alarm and voice command options are limited and unchangeable, though there is a pleasant “Sleep Sound” ambient noise function. The concept of an alarm clock that requires an ongoing, if simple, conversation to function properly is enough to justify its reasonable $US50 price, and endorsement by the World Blind Union would seem to indicate that it’s not a complete gimmick. Feature demos and purchase page are at the source link. [Moshi via Crave]

In 2003, we reported on a GPS navigation device that led the visually impaired to their impending doom due to an “inaccuracy” of the system.

Although this new GPS device is not as cuddly as a guide dog, it is made up of one earpiece and microphone, which would allow the blind a certain anonymity, kind of like Daredevil, in that he would no longer need a cane or furry pet, which would leave both of his hands free … to fight crime, perhaps? [create the future contest via gizmag]

The 4G iPod nano features an optional spoken interface to help with audio navigation, and the new hardware includes blind-friendly features like the “shake to shuffle” function (we were wondering who that was for!). Apple’s new mic-integrated headphones provide tactile controls on the cable, and can also be used to receive vocal commands. But most importantly, Apple has promised in this agreement to flesh out its compatibility and make iTunes 8 and iTunes U 100% accessible for the blind by the end of the year, as well as donating $US250,000 to the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind. As much as I rail against Apple, this is a really worthwhile cause and makes me feel pretty warm and fuzzy towards the White Overlords. [AppleInsider]

Noriaki lowered the B&D’s cost by building it’s chassis out of cardboard (the entire thing can be put together yourself), and by running its braille lettering program off an open source platform. I’m not completely sure how this technology helps deaf people any more regular phones, but it’s a cool concept for helping out the visually impaired. [B&D Messenger via Tuvie]