Braille phone is a universal cellular phone concept that is able to produce Braille code in a particular part of it by using Electric Active Plastic to make it usable for visually handicapped people. The phone has been designed in a simple and easy to use manner and looks like a television remote control. The Braille area provides all the information that a traditional screen of a cell phone displays so that visually impaired people can read them by touching it. It provides letter blocks in two by three dot matrixes and by using this principle on buttons, visually challenged people can easily create or read text messages. This braille phone just won Red Dot Awards 2009.
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The Touch Color concept has been specially designed to make blind people able to draw and admire colorful digital pictures. This innovative device comprises a Rainbow Picker in a form of a scroll wheel, which contains Braille dots that allows blind people to select a color from 24 available. After selecting a color, this device differentiates the colors by generating varied temperatures through LED bulbs. Then the user can paint on a thermal art board by using their fingers and the thermal-color display technology keeps the track of the lines and colors the blind artist is using.
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The new B&D messenger is a revolutionary device designed for users with visual and hearing impairment, enabling them to communicate easily with the regular cell phone user. The basic working of the device is that it is connected to computer and the internet which translates Braille to text and vice versa thus sensing and receiving SMS to the normal user. While for a visually impaired person, the device comes with two options such as the messages can be delivered in Braille format or the same can be read out aloud depending upon the mode one chooses while for the hearing impaired it can be used as a normal cellphone for reading and sending text messages. So happy messaging!
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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
