Dear Greg,
This seems to me a simple and ingenious idea especially for somebody
like myself who has always been a Braille user. From the description
in your message, however, I am not entirely clear yet whether the
finger presses corresponding to the Braille letters would be/might be
carried out on the device itself, or would a blind user require an
additional Braille-style keyboard. I hope the former is the case which
would have an obvious advantage of offering to a blind user the same
size and portability of a device. Is this what you have in mind? A
kind of press sensitive area corresponding to 6 braille dots which one
could press and then double-tap the spacebar for the command to be
executed?
Greg, what's Apple Braille? Is it a Braille dsiplay?
Greg, your continuing work in the area of accessibility for totally
blind users of Mac computers and more broadly Apple technology is
greatly appreciated.
With best wishes
Simon
On 10 Sep 2008, at 16:13, Greg Kearney wrote:
Let me try this idea for accessible touch systems on you. How to
make the touch screens accessible is a big issue with no clear
solution. As more devices adopt this interface something will have
to be done however. Here is one approach to the issue:
Braille input for touch screen devices
Braille is the international standard for reading, and in this case,
writing employed by the blind. Braille offers a possible method of
interacting with and controlling touch screen devices such as the
iPod Touch and the iPhone. Braille is a corded entry system made up
of six positions of the fingers.
Touch screens could be programed to detect the various combinations
of finger presses and their relationship to each other and then act
accordingly. This combined with text to speech output would permit
the blind user to control a touch screen device.
When in "braille input mode" the user would enter in grade one
braille commands to which the devices would respond with speech. For
example consider the task of choosing music to play.
The use would enter the word "play" in braille on the screen
followed by taping the "space bar" in this case the double press of
two thumbs at the bottom of the screen to activate the command. The
system would respond by announcing the first song of the cover flow
selections. The user would then do a "N" and a double tap of the
space bar to move forward and a "B" to move backwards through the
list. When the use found the song he wanted a double tap of the
space bar would activate the choice.
The use could limit the listing by providing the play command a name
for example "play haydn" would limit the search to music by Haydn.
Similar interfaces could be done for phone calls in the iPhone. A
user could issue a command "call bob" the unit would respond with a
list of users with bob in the name the user would then use the "N"
and "B' commands to move through the lists until he finds the one he
wants to call and then issue a double tap of the space bar to place
the call or a "info" command to read the information about that
person.
By using grade one braille we can avoid the issue of expanding
contraction and make the system easy to use even for blind users who
might not otherwise be braille users. Braille would permit the blind
user to enter information into the phone. An added benefit is that
braille entry would permit even sighted users to type quickly into a
touch device much as if they had a keyboard attached to the device.
With the addition of Braille Apple would be offering the least
expensive and most capable braille device ont eh market today when
you consider that similar devices for the blind have costs well in
excess of $1000. In addition it would offer a fast data input method
for the sighted as well.
Well that is all for now.
Greg Kearney
Curtin University Centre for Accessible Technology
www.cucat.org
