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.
Optical character recognition tool might have applications for assistive technology users
WordLens is a new iPhone app that can be used to recognize text within graphics and translate it (just Spanish->English and English->Spanish for now). Because this uses optical character recognition, we wonder if the technology could also be used to address the inaccessibility of bitmapped text on Web pages by capturing text and relaying it to a speech output program instead of a translator.
TechCrunch: Word Lens Translates Words Inside of Images. Yes Really.
Ready, set, Odiogo
One of the most popular assistive technology features we’ve been asked about in recent years is the ability to convert text to downloadable audio files on the fly. Now there’s Odiogo, a free, mainstream service that does the same thing for “news sites and blog posts.” Great for anyone who prefers audio format or who benefits from simultaneous reading and listening. The only drawback is that it’s not controllable by the end user; instead, the website owner has to sign up for it.
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.
Still better Windows text-to-speech
Balabolka adds new features to free text-to-speech for Windows. You can import all kinds of files, set the voice characteristics you want, change the speed and emphasis, etc., then export the results as audio files, say for an mp3 player. Note that this is not a screen reader — it’s a utility for producing better-than-average synthetic speech for almost any text you have.
Balabolka Enhances Windows Text-to-Speech with Reading Styles and Audio Export
Like a hand with a cool seven-letter word, or like QWXJJZK?
The first commercial app is now available for the Kindle: a uniplayer version of Scrabble. Can it be used with Kindle’s voice output capabilities? Now that there’s a precedent, will there be other apps that take advantage of Kindle voice output? Will Larry Wanger’s article on Kindle accessibility affect the number of blind users who even buy one? Tune in tomorrow…
Boil howdy
The Boil Buoy gets put in the pot of water you’ve got on the stove. When the water hits the boiling stage, the Buoy gives out a ringing tone. Developed for the mainstream via Quirky, the design-by-consensus website, but we expect blind folks to account for a large percentage of the presale orders necessary for it to actually come to market.