In November 2007, I started an open letter initiative [1] to convince Google to make the Android platform accessible for blind users. Now I want to say: Google, thank you! Especially thanks to T.V. Raman and Charles Chen.
Although I have written lots of mails to the Android developer lists and to several Google departments, I never received an answer but my mails must be read by the right persons with the right understanding. Thanks again! Pieces from a New York Times article, published on January 03, 2009: [...] Mr. Raman, 43, is now working to modify the latest technological gadget that he says could make life easier for blind people: a touch-screen phone. [...] With no buttons to guide the fingers on its glassy surface, the touch-screen cellphone may seem a particularly daunting challenge. But Mr. Raman said that with the right tweaks, touch-screen phones - many of which already come equipped with GPS technology and a compass - could help blind people navigate the world. "How much of a leap of faith does it take for you to realize that your phone could say, 'Walk straight and within 200 feet you'll get to the intersection of X and Y,' " Mr. Raman said. "This is entirely doable." [...] Now, much of their effort is focused on touch-screen phones. "The thing I am most interested in is all of the stuff moving to the mobile world, because it is a big life-changer," Mr. Raman said. To show their progress, Mr. Raman pulled his T-Mobile G1, a touch-screen phone with Google's Android software, from a pocket of his jeans. He and Mr. Chen have already outfitted it with software that speaks much like a screen reader on a PC. Now they are working on ways to allow blind people, or anyone who is not looking at the screen, to enter text, numbers and commands. That development would complement voice-recognition systems, which are not always reliable and don't work well in noisy environments. 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. He and Mr. Chen are testing several other input methods. None of these technologies have been rolled out, but Mr. Raman, who is already using the G1 as his primary cellphone, hopes to make them freely available soon. (Few screen readers are available for smartphones today, and they can often cost as much as a phone itself.) What may become the most life-changing mobile technology - a phone that can recognize and read signs through its camera - may still be a few years away, Mr. Raman said. Already, some devices can read text this way. But because blind users don't know where signs are, they can't point the camera at them or align it properly, Mr. Raman said. Once chips become powerful enough, they will be able to detect a sign's location and read skewed type, he said. "Those things will happen," he said. When they do, sighted users will benefit, too. Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/business/04blind.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all [1]: http://blind.wikia.com/wiki/Open_Letter_Initiative Best regards, Per Busch ----- Original Message ----- From: "Per" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, November 24, 2007 6:35 PM Subject: [android-discuss] Android could make life for blind people easier [...] --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Discuss" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-discuss?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
