My very first thought... How about overlaying the screen with a sheet of rubber buttons? I'm thinking of the sort of thing that you get inside cheap mobile phones, TV remotes, pocket calculators; that sort of stuff. The number 5 would have the bump on it and the keys would simply push against the touchscreen. Let me know if that's not a great description...
It's likely to be overkill, but it would be a quick way of producing a proof of concept model. Later on you could remove the screen and put regular buttons in. Then you'd just need the software, which should be more than doable. I think you've got a great idea, Joseph 2008/7/11 John Whitmore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Hello All, > firstly I'm a listener on this list not a poster. Waiting for my > FreeRunner and then I'll have more relevant contributions, if any. > > I'm not visually Impaired or blind but I'm very curious about them. At > present on a phone there is a wee nipple, (for want of a better word) on > the "5" key so that people can feel it and know where they are. (That's > great but what's better to my mind is that all the Euro Bank Notes have > different markers on them so that blind people know how much money > they're handing over, and being handed back. Keep trying to find the > markers but still can't distinguish them.) > > Back on point of this question. Do blind people use phones and if so how > will a blind person use a phone with no keypad, (and hence the nipple)? > Actually given that the person is blind you could get rid of the screen > altogether? > > This may all seem a bit off topic but I thought that FreeRunner with the > gesture stuff would be so brilliant for blind people. Started thinking > that if you could tap morse on the phone and have it detected and > converted into text that'd be brilliant. Perhaps Blind people have > special phones? > > If I knew a blind person I could find out. > > Perhaps there's a project in taking a FreeRunner and removing the > screen, (either VGA or QVGA I don't care ;-) and have really good speech > recognition in it and for get the morse altogether. Could the phone read > out an SMS message? > > what a first post! Sorry. > > _______________________________________________ > Openmoko community mailing list > community@lists.openmoko.org > http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community > _______________________________________________ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community