[stylist] For Eve, RE: OT: FYI: braille device for smart phones

Wed Feb 22 21:05:10 UTC 2012

I did Navajo weaving in third grade and hated it.  smile
Vejas

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Donna Hill" <penatwork at epix.net
To: "'Writer's Division Mailing List'" <stylist at nfbnet.org
Date sent: Wed, 22 Feb 2012 15:16:46 -0500
Subject: [stylist] For Eve, RE:  OT: FYI: braille device for 
smart phones

Eve,
Blind Stitchers is actually a knitting and crochet group.  We 
have some
weavers and loom knitters as well.
Donna

-----Original Message-----
From: stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org 
[mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Eve Sanchez
Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2012 3:01 PM
To: Writer's Division Mailing List
Subject: Re: [stylist] OT: FYI: braille device for smart phones

Cool news.  Thanks for sharing.  Oh and I take it that blind 
stitchers is a
sewing group? Sounds fun.  Guess what Im doing today.  I have to 
do it all by
hand though as I dont have a decent sewing machine.  Smile.  Eve

On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 10:10 AM, Donna Hill <penatwork at epix.net> 
wrote:

 Saw this on another list.  The source wasn't given.
 Donna

 Can Braille be faster than QWERTY? App developer thinks so

 By John D.  Sutter, CNN

 (CNN) - If Mario Romero has his way, we'll all be learning 
Braille soon.

 The post-doc researcher at Georgia Institute of Technology has
co-developed
 an app, called BrailleTouch, that could help blind people send 
text
 messages
 and type e-mails on touch-screen smartphones without the need 
for
 expensive,

 extra equipment.  To use the app, people hold their phones with 
the screens
 facing away from them and punch combinations of six touch-screen 
buttons
to
 form characters.  The app speaks a letter aloud after it's been 
registered,
 so there's no need to see the screen.

 The system is designed for blind and visually impaired people, 
who
 otherwise

 have to purchase thousand-dollar machines or cumbersome 
"hover-over" (more
 on that later) keyboards to be able to type on no-button 
smartphones.  But
 Romero sees a spin-off for the technology: The touch-screen 
Braille
 keyboard
 is so fast that sighted people may start using it, too.

 "It may be a solution for everybody to get their eyes off their 
phone so
 they can walk and text or watch TV and make a comment on a 
blog," he said
 by

 phone.
 "It may free the sighted people's eyes" and help visually 
impaired people
 to

 type more easily.

 The free app, which is being developed for Apple iOS and Google 
Android
 devices, should be available in a matter of weeks, he said.

 You can watch a video of the app in action
  on YouTube:

 iframe%3e%3c/span%3e

 So far, the app has only undergone limited tests, and Romero 
declined to
 make a pre-release version available to CNN.  In an 11-person 
trial,
 however,

 he
 said, some Braille typists were able to go faster than they 
could on
 standard, QWERTY keyboards.  One visually impaired person, who 
was already
 familiar
 with Braille (you punch the six keys in various combinations to 
make
 letters) typed at a rate of 32 words per minute, Romero said, 
with 92%
 accuracy.  Romero
 himself, who never had used a Braille keyboard before, was able 
to type at
 about 25 words per minute with 100% accuracy after a week of 
practice, he
 said.

 The app will undergo more rigorous testing before it's released, 
said
 Romero, who is a post-doctoral researcher at the university's 
School of
 Interactive
 Computing.  It was developed with the help of  Brian Frey, 
Gregory Abowd,
 James Clawson and Kate Rosier.

 Smartphones are generally pretty good at reading material on 
their screens
 to people who have vision problems, he said, but it's usually 
difficult to
 enter
 text on the devices.  To get a sense of what it's like for a 
blind person
to
 use an iPhone you can go to Settings >> General >> 
Accessibility, and turn
 the "VoiceOver" feature on.  When you touch a menu item, the 
iPhone reads
 the

 text aloud in a computerized voice.  To select something on the 
screen, you
 double-tap that item.  To scroll, you use three fingers.

 All that works well, Romero said, but typing on an iPhone 
without buttons
 is

 a pain.  Another alternative, he said, is attaching a hardware 
Braille
 keyboard
 to a smarpthone, but those are difficult to carry and are 
expensive:

 block quote
 "The options (blind people) have right now are either too 
expensive and
 cumbersome or too slow.  Virtual keyboards and soft keyboards - 
like
Apple's
 voice-over
 keyboard - are too slow.  Or they have options to get hardware 
that costs
 several thousand dollars."

 block quote end

 The new app may not alleviate all of those problems.  On Android 
phones,
the
 BrailleTouch app can be programmed in as the phone's standard 
keyboard.
 Because
 of restrictions on iOS, he said, that can't happen on an iPhone, 
so people
 who want to use the BrailleTouch keyboard have to open the app, 
type into
a
 text document and then copy-paste that into an e-mail or text 
message.

 Romero admits that this app isn't the end-all-be-all in typing.  
But it's
 helping create a future, as he said, when "one day we're not 
slaves to the
 screens."

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