[Nfbf-l] Fw: Google’s Phone Apps for the Blind, and Everyone Else
Paul Kaminsky
pkaminsky at bellsouth.net
Tue Apr 7 14:04:50 UTC 2009
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From:
Sent: Tuesday, April 07, 2009 8:39 AM
Subject: Google’s Phone Apps for the Blind, and
Everyone Else
April 2, 2009, 4:27 pm
Google’s Phone Apps for the Blind, and
Everyone Else
By Miguel Helft
Peter DaSilva for The New York Times T.V.
Raman with his guide dog Hubbell and Charles Chen.
The featureless glassy screens of touch-screen
phones may seem like a forbidding barrier for blind
users, who often rely on tactile clues to feel their
way around. But a pair of engineers at Google, T.V.
Raman, who is blind, and Charles Chen, who is
sighted, have developed software that makes the
touch-screen T-Mobile G1, which uses Google’s
Android software, more accessible to blind users.
They hope the technology will also be useful to
anyone who needs to operate a phone without looking
at the screen, like drivers.
Back in January, I profiled Mr. Raman, who has
a long history of adapting technology to his needs.
I thought the work on touch screens he was doing
with Mr. Chen was intriguing:
Since he cannot precisely hit a button on a
touch screen, Mr. Raman created a dialer that works
based on relative positions. It interprets any place
where he first touches the screen as a 5, the center
of a regular telephone dial pad. To dial any other
number, he simply slides his finger in its
direction — up and to the left for 1, down and to
the right for 9, and so on. If he makes a mistake,
he can erase a digit simply by shaking the phone,
which can detect motion.
If that is hard to conceptualize, now you can
see it in action. Mr. Raman and Mr. Chen have
created five videos to demonstrate the first
installment of their work, which includes a “shell”
application that operates an Android device, a
dialer and a method for inputting text.
The applications themselves are available in
the Android Marketplace, an applications store for
the G1. Mr. Raman said that based on comments posted
there, more sighted people than blind people were
using the applications. That’s perhaps not
surprising, since blind users may not have been
inclined to purchase a touch-screen phone, even one
with a keyboard like the G1. But it seems to
validate Mr. Raman’s approach in developing
technologies not just for the blind, but for anyone
who cannot look at the screen.
“People are saying they are using it in their
cars,” Mr. Raman said.
The “shell” application has an interesting
location function that combines GPS or cell tower
location data with Google Maps and the G1’s compass.
For Mr. Raman, who was once dropped off by the
Google employee shuttle on the opposite side of the
street from his usual drop-off location and walked
two blocks before realizing he was heading the wrong
way, it’s pretty useful technology. “You just touch
it, and it tells you which direction you are heading
in, the location you are close to, and the cross
streets,” he said.
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