[SÉNS] Mobile Phone Concept for People with Visual Impairment Including Complete Blindness

TheFuture — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 07:20:20 +0000

Mobiles have become a part of our. It is as if life won’t move a step ahead without mobile phones. Now just imagine if you could not clearly see the digits and alphabets on your mobile, hard to even imagine right? Many visually impaired people have the ability to recognize things like light intensity colors. Takumi Yoshida gives the basic phone status to such people through color illumination and identifiable keypad, called SÉNS. With the help of glow of color they will be able to see the tiny texts on screen to at least some extent. The enlightenment is positioned on the sides as the sides are the ones that are exposed when the phone is on a flat surface.

In order to improve audio interactions between the user and the phone, SÉNS combines touch sensors and regular mechanical keys to provide real-time audio feedbacks. What this means is that when a user touches a key, the phone tells him what key has been touched without actually registering it as an input. The user may hover across the keys to consecutively gain feedbacks on which key they are touching.

Once the user is sure his finger is on the correct key, he then can press the key just like on any other standard phones. Once a key is pressed, another ‘click’ sound is fed back to confirm the input. This system is essentially just an audio version of what people without sight problems always utilizes; visual indications. This provides more efficient interactions and reduces the chance of making wrong inputs compared to current products used by people with visual impairment as they only provide audio feedbacks after key inputs are registered.

One of the biggest issues with ‘talking’ phones is that the sound interaction can be heard by other people nearby. Using a headset wired or wireless (if Bluetooth is available) can solve the problem, however having a headset integrated to the main phone can offer a number of advantages.

Designer : Takumi Yoshida

Siafu PC Design with Full Spread Braill Layouts

TheFuture — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 02:41:15 +0000

One of Next-Gen PC Design finalists is Siafu PC Design. The idea behind Siafu was to give people with vision loss an intuitive computer experience. It provides a digitally tactile interface that completely revolutionizes the way that blind people interact with a computer. Siafu lays flat like a tablet and allows the user to fully interact with it by way of touch. The surface of Siafu utilizes a conceptual material called magneclay. This material has the ability to morph upward into any shape. This means that Siafu can generate infinitely refreshable braille and then display it in a book format instead of just one line at a time like current braille displays. Siafu also has the ability to display images as a 3-dimensional relief, allowing blind computer users to experience digital images, and graphic layouts for the first time.

This product is to be used by people who have experienced a loss of sight. Siafu allows users to read text by generating full page braille displays.

The onscreen relief feature also allows users to explore the internet and navigate through websites by physically touching, clicking, and dragging the graphic elements, links, and arrows of the web page. Siafu is also capable of converting all onscreen text to braille relief, so that the user can read whatever is on the screen first hand.

Designer : Jonathan Lucas via NextGenDesign

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[SÉNS] Mobile Phone Concept for People with Visual Impairment Including Complete Blindness

Siafu PC Design with Full Spread Braill Layouts