[Ohio-talk] new smart watch

Mon Jul 27 21:21:54 UTC 2015

I agree with Marianne. It seems the author has failed to conduct thurrough research about those who would use the product he's writing about. He probably has no clue how blind people would access information at all. Perhaps, if you're reading this with your eyes, or odds are if you're reading this in print would be more suitable. He probably does not even realize that he just snubbed everyone the article is relevant to. An email to him might be great for personal education.

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> On Jul 27, 2015, at 3:22 PM, 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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> techinasia-8ad2f16f1cfd0d6443a089c0624042b4
> Leslie
> 16 hours ago
> This is definitely more useful than apple watch or pebble. This is what I call real innovation. Kudos
> 
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> 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!
> 
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> techinasia-4908abf01ae104097641c7984131e9dd
> Eric Ju Yoon Kim
> Colin Moreshead
> 7 hours ago
> Thanks you Colin, here is an example of ATM dot module!
> 
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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 :)
> 
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> 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!
> 
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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
> 
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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
> 
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> kristiankolby
> Kristian Kolby
> 8 hours ago
> Works with Android?
> 
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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.
> 
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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!
> 
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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!
> 
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> 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!
> 
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> techinasia-ce80993289bf0e45c95ed6c95bfdd07d
> David Corbin
> Eric Ju Yoon Kim
> 4 hours ago
> Awesome! Thanks for considering us :-)
> 
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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.
> 
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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.
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