17 September 2009

Nokia's Touchscreen Devices Puts
Braille At The Fingertips Of Visually Challenged

Mobile phone technology has grown by leaps and bounds, but sadly nothing much has been done to make communication easier for the differently-abled.

To correct this, and to provide a viable alternative to the deaf, blind and mute people, Nokia and collaborators from the University of Tampere in Finland have come out with a Braille application for touchscreen devices that gives SMS for the blind and visually impaired.

It captures received SMS messages and brings them to the foreground for reading using Braille and tactile feedback. Nokia Braille Reader uses vibrations wherein the intensity transcripts itself into readable signals.

In Braille, letters are encoded using a two-by-three matrix in which each character is represented by a different configuration of raised and absent dots at the six locations.

We here at Nokia, and our partners as well, have been thinking of how to do something concrete about accessibility for quite some while. And now, our new Nokia Braille Reader application gives SMS for the blind and visually impaired. It captures received SMS messages and brings them to the foreground for reading using Braille and tactile feedback.

The application was concepted together with actual users and researchers focusing on the topic, and we are now happy to show the first experimental version of the concept. We hope to get your comments and feedback so this application could be truly optimized to your use. We also want to share our enthusiasm in creating innovations for you and with you.