[Ohio-talk] new smart watch

Marianne Denning marianne at denningweb.com
Mon Jul 27 19:25:00 UTC 2015


James, there were a couple of things I took exception to but I thought
the message was important.  Maybe we should email the author.

On 7/27/15, James Fetter via Ohio-talk <ohio-talk at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> Here it is. By the way, I think that we should all take issue with the
> first sentence, but notwithstanding that, it is very informative.
>
> This Korean startup is making wearables for the blind, but its ambition
> is much bigger
> Colin Moreshead
> Colin Moreshead
> 17 hours ago
>
> I need to begin with a disclaimer: if you’re reading this sentence right
> now, you don’t need the product featured in this article. But trust me,
> it’s worth
> a look all the same.
>
> Dot1
>
> The smartwatch market has exploded over the past few years. In fact,
> reports show that smartwatch sales have
> increased an astronomical 457 percent
>   in the last year alone, a figure that can be attributed to the Apple
> Watch. Since its release in April,
> Apple’s flagship wearable has captured a full three-quarters of the market,
> reaching about 4 million units sold to date. One thing you could safely
> assume about nearly every one of those customers, though – they can all see.
>
> The World Health Organization estimates that there are
> 285 million people with severe visual impairment around the world,
> of whom 39 million are completely blind. Among them, literacy is a
> serious issue because access to Braille education and materials is
> limited. Even for
> the literate blind, reading is laborious – one Braille Bible comes in 40
> volumes, for example – and remains largely limited to the printed word.
> Active
> Braille technology, which displays changing Braille text in real time,
> typically cost upward of US$3,000 and haven’t changed much over the past
> decade.
>
> Dot
>   is a South Korean startup that believes the active Braille market is
> ripe for disruption. It has produced an active Braille smartwatch that’s
> a low-cost
> education and communication tool for the blind. With it, Dot hopes to
> return equal information access to a demographic that has been left
> behind in the
> age of real-time digital text.
>
> A tactile experience
>
> Dot2
>
> The Dot smartwatch appears, at first glance, like one of the many
> screenless wearables on the market already. You might mistake it for a
> white
> Fitbit
>   from its telltale bulge where the hardware module rests atop the
> wearer’s wrist. That module houses four “cells” of six active dots each
> – enough for
> four Braille characters to be displayed at once. The device can be
> calibrated to display new characters at speeds ranging from a glacial 1
> hertz to a breakneck
> 100 hertz; development has yielded a battery life of 10 hours, which
> will give average users five days between charges, Dot says.
>
> The device is based on haptic technology, which provides feedback or
> information in real time through touch. By linking to any Bluetooth
> device, the Dot
> smartwatch can pull text from applications like iMessage using voice
> commands. Co-founder and CEO Eric Ju Yoon Kim says that Dot gives users
> the chance
> to read text their own way.
>
> “Until now, if you got a message on iOS from your girlfriend, for
> example, you had to listen to Siri read it to you in that voice, which
> is impersonal,”
> Kim explains. “Wouldn’t you rather read it yourself and hear your
> girlfriend’s voice saying it in your head?”
>
> As a wearable, Dot is still without competition. Current industry
> leaders produce hardware in the form of keyboards with active Braille
> cells that connect
> to computers via USB, with price tags in the thousands of dollars. Kim
> tells Tech in Asia that when the Dot smartwatch goes on sale in the
> United States
> this December, it will retail for less than US$300.
>
> Going global
> Part of the Dot team: lead designer Mason Joo, CEO Eric Kim, CTO Ki
> Sung, and software engineer Juhwan Lim.
>
> (L-R): Lead designer Mason Joo, CEO Eric Kim, CTO Ki Sung, and software
> engineer Juhwan Lim.
>
> Kim founded Dot with Titus Cheng, a classmate from the University of
> Washington. The team they built in Seoul includes specialists in
> hardware, software,
> and design. In its first round of seed funding, Dot raised US$100,000
> from the
> ActnerLab
> accelerator and an additional $500,000 from the South Korean government’s
> Tech Incubator Program for Startup
>   (TIPS). The company will begin its second round of seed funding in
> August with a goal of raising US$1 million, and it’s hoping for
> international investors
> to help promote the company’s products overseas.
>
> Though the smartwatch will go on sale in the US and Canada first, Dot is
> trying out other applications for its active Braille modules in South
> Korea. In
> a push that Kim is calling “public Braille,” the company has installed
> modules at ATMs and in train stations. Like the smartwatch, these
> modules can be
> programmed to display information updated in real time, such as account
> balance information or a subway schedule.
>
> “The Braille at ATMs currently tells you, ‘This is an ATM,’ which isn’t
> super helpful,” says Kim. “I think these sorts of public places, and the
> public
> sector in particular, could become our largest market in the future.”
>
> That means expanding to other countries like Japan and China. Japan has
> a strong history of updating infrastructure to reflect the needs of its
> disabled
> citizens, as evidenced by the country’s ubiquitous tactile paving. China
> accounts for nearly one-fifth of the world’s blind population and boasts
> a rapidly
> evolving public infrastructure. Kim sees huge growth potential in both
> markets and says Dot’s next few hires later this year will likely
> reflect that.
>
> Educating a clientele
>
> Kim admits that part of the challenge that lies before his company is
> creating a broader demand for the product. Unlike Apple or Samsung, Dot
> has an immediate,
> vested interest in promoting literacy as a means of increasing its
> number of potential customers. By many accounts, Braille literacy has
> actually fallen
> over the past half-century; Kim attributes that to the lack of effective
> educational tools.
>
> “90 percent of blind people become blind after birth, and there’s
> nothing for them right now – they lose their access to information so
> suddenly,” says
> Kim. “Dot can be their lifeline, so they can learn Braille and access
> everyday information through their fingers, which is the goal of Braille
> literacy.”
>
> Everyday language has some existing haptic support in the form of
> single-line active Braille devices, but Dot is concerned that education
> requiring complex
> text and diagrams, like mathematics, is still off-limits to the blind.
> To solve that, the company is also developing a tablet device to display
> multi-line
> text, graphs, and shapes. Native educational apps could be part of Dot’s
> next developmental phase.
>
> Making waves
>
> Dot3
>
> Dot is starting with only 10,000 smartwatches for its release this
> December, but the company is poised to take advantage of an
> underdeveloped market. The
> Dot team has just welcomed Dr. Dong-Soo Kwon of
> KAIST,
> South Korea’s top science and engineering university. He adds 54 patents
> in haptic technology to Dot’s existing five, providing a strong head
> start over
> potential competitors for the company, founded only one year ago.
>
> Those patents might also be a ticket to deals with larger companies.
> Smart device makers like Apple and Samsung have experimented with
> haptics to improve
> the way their models vibrate, and Kim says that Dot hopes to innovate
> products meant for the sighted as well.
>
> Dot’s primary mission remains information accessibility for the blind.
> Kim has plenty of ideas for how their four-cell module can grant the
> blind access
> to things that have gone digital, like microwaves or rice cookers. He
> wants to bring the blind up to speed on the same advances the rest of us
> enjoy.
>
> “Every time technology moves forward we see more real-time information,
> but for the blind, that’s a widening discrimination gap,” explains Kim.
> “We are
> solving that information discrimination with the equal accessibility the
> Dot smartwatch provides.”
>
> Editing by Terence Lee and J.T. Quigley
> (And yes, we're serious about ethics and transparency. More information
> here.
> )
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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> list of 16 items
> BLIND
> BLUETOOTH
> DOT
> GADGET
> KOREA
> KOREAN STARTUPS
> SEED FUNDING
> SEOUL
> SMARTWATCH
> SMARTWATCHES
> STARTUPS IN KOREA
> TIPS
> WEARABLE
> WEARABLE DEVICES
> WEARABLE TECH
> WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY
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> list of 5 items
> techinasia-8ad2f16f1cfd0d6443a089c0624042b4
> Leslie
> 16 hours ago
> This is definitely more useful than apple watch or pebble. This is what
> I call real innovation. Kudos
>
> 2
>> Reply
> Share ›
> list of 3 items nesting level 1
> techinasia-ed08ffe048c32cd55986623fd0aac732
> Colin Moreshead
>   Leslie
> 12 hours ago
> And it uses the same module they plan to use for public Braille, meaning
> that large public sector orders mean lower average cost for private
> customers!
>
> 1
>> Reply
> Share ›
> list of 1 items nesting level 2
> techinasia-4908abf01ae104097641c7984131e9dd
> Eric Ju Yoon Kim
>   Colin Moreshead
> 7 hours ago
> Thanks you Colin, here is an example of ATM dot module!
>
> list of 1 items nesting level 3
> ⛺⛺
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> Vote up
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> techinasia-3295c76acbf4caaed33c36b1b5fc2cb1
> Willis Wee
>   Leslie
> 15 hours ago
> Agree. I hope the market is big enough that it attracts investments from
> investors. great cause and business :)
>
> 1
>> Reply
> Share ›
> techinasia-4908abf01ae104097641c7984131e9dd
> Eric Ju Yoon Kim
>   Leslie
> 8 hours ago
> Hello Leslie, I'm Eric from the team dot. Thanks for your compliment, we
> will do our best!
>
> Vote up
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> kristiankolby
> Kristian Kolby
> 6 hours ago
> Took the liberty to advice the blind communitiy in Denmark!
> I think they were exited, please make this avaliable in Europe/Scandinavia
>
> 1
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> techinasia-4908abf01ae104097641c7984131e9dd
> Eric Ju Yoon Kim
>   Kristian Kolby
> 6 hours ago
> Thank you, Kristian! I'm really glad that they were excited! :)
> Of course we will make this available in Europe/Scandinavia!
> For the Scandinavia, we have talked with communities in Sweden so far.
> If you don't mind, would you please connect us to your connections?
> Here's my mail! eric at dotincorp.com
>
> Vote up
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> kristiankolby
> Kristian Kolby
> 8 hours ago
> Works with Android?
>
> 1
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> techinasia-ed08ffe048c32cd55986623fd0aac732
> Colin Moreshead
>   Kristian Kolby
> 8 hours ago
> Yes! Any device that can be connected via Bluetooth. Android and iOS are
> both supported.
>
> 1
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> techinasia-4908abf01ae104097641c7984131e9dd
> Eric Ju Yoon Kim
>   Colin Moreshead
> 7 hours ago
> Yes! Both Android and iOS :) Thanks for your kind explanation Colin!
>
> Vote up
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> techinasia-ce80993289bf0e45c95ed6c95bfdd07d
> David Corbin
> 14 hours ago
> Very cool idea! I want to try it, haha. They should come to Tech in Asia
> Tokyo and exhibit!
>
> 1
>> Reply
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> list of 1 items nesting level 1
> techinasia-4908abf01ae104097641c7984131e9dd
> Eric Ju Yoon Kim
>   David Corbin
> 7 hours ago
> Thank you, David! We will let you know when our first product released!
> And as you said, we are applying startup booth at Bootstrap Alley, and
> Arena now!
>
> 1
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> techinasia-ce80993289bf0e45c95ed6c95bfdd07d
> David Corbin
>   Eric Ju Yoon Kim
> 4 hours ago
> Awesome! Thanks for considering us :-)
>
> Vote up
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> techinasia-63dc7ed1010d3c3b8269faf0ba7491d4
> Terence Lee
> 16 hours ago
> A rare startup that has potential to make a huge impact while making money.
>
> 1
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> techinasia-4908abf01ae104097641c7984131e9dd
> Eric Ju Yoon Kim
>   Terence Lee
> 6 hours ago
> Thank you, Terence! We will do our best to impact the world.
>
> Vote up
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-- 
Marianne Denning, TVI, MA
Teacher of students who are blind or visually impaired
(513) 607-6053




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