[Nfbf-l] Fw: Google’s Phone Apps for the Blind, and Everyone Else

[Paul Kaminsky]

----- Original Message ----- 
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.