New phone designs could help users with disabilities
Nonobject is an offbeat design studio in Palo Alto that’s proposing three new cell phone designs, all of which have accessibility implications. The Rawphisticated, which looks like a crumpled business card, could be refined so that the crumples provide tactile distinctions between keys for blind folks. The Tarati has recessed keys, providing an effect similar to keyguards that have been used for years by people with hand tremor or some other types of dexterity disabilities. And the CuN5 reminds us of T.V. Raman’s touchpad design, which would define the 5 key as anywhere a blind user touches the screen.
Exquisite control
Oh my, we do like the Sony RM-KZ1 universal remote. Originally designed for kids, its main buttons are all distinct shapes (easy to distinguish by touch for blind folks) and have high-contrast labeling. Plus, it prevents volume from being changed too much too fast. It’ll set you back all of $18 at Target.
Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song?
The AlphaUi keyboard is an interesting concept: you hold it like an iPad, but you press actual keys on the bottom with eight fingers rather than virtual keys on the top with your thumbs. The screen has a display that lights the keys as you press them. Our jury’s out as to whether the physical setup will provide an accessibility edge. Instead, what really intrigued us was the key order–alphabetic rather than QWERTY, which is great for people with cognitive disabilities as well as those who’ve never learned touch typing. Has QWERTY finally met its match? Will we see this reflected in other keyboard designs?
Engadget: AlphaUi Back-Type keyboard for tablets will never catch on, but we wish it would
Beam me up, Numi
Most of us have wallets or keychains bursting with loyalty and membership cards for various stores, and it doesn’t even take having a disability to experience difficulty finding and retrieving them when needed. Enter the Numi Key, which stores all your card information electronically, then lets you retrieve as needed and wirelessly transmit to a POS device. The display looks pretty legible (can we beg for a voice-output option in a future release?), and the buttons could well be tactilely discernable.
The Gadgeteer: Consolidate your loyalty cards into one device
Genuine simulated tactility
Toshiba is exploring artificial texture for touch screens. By changing the charge on a surface film, the device will present the user with simulated rough, smooth, or fuzzy textures. This could work well for blind users, who would be able to distinguish buttons and controls on a touchscreen, one of the major barriers to those ubiquitous input systems.
Tempdot by the fruit of another
Some good ideas just scream “Yanko Design” even before you click on the original link. Today’s example: the Tempdot faucet, which has no handles. Instead, you touch one of nine dots whose color corresponds to the approximate temperature you want; the water then begins to flow at that temp. Great for dexterity disabilities; could be easily modified to be tactile for the benefit of people with low or no vision.
Miniguru
The proposed Miniguru keyboard goes our old friend Optimus Maximus one better. Like the Optimus, it allows you to customize the key functions and displays–but it also allows you to specify whether you want the keys to be “clicky,” “tactile,” or “linear.” Not clear whether you could actually do this key adjustment at will (we’d love that) or whether there would simply be different models available. Regardless, this would be great not only for people with various types of dexterity impairments, but also for elders who have been reluctant to use computer keyboards because the touch feels so different from the typewriters they’re used to.