What it sees is what you get
Evolution Robotics has announced that its ViPR visual search engine will arrive on the iPhone this June. What’s a visual search engine? Take a picture of any book, CD, or DVD, and information about it comes back to your mobile phone. Sounds amazing, no? It even works when the object is upside down or partially hidden.
Consider the implications for blind, low vision, and cognitively disabled users, especially once it can recognize other objects, places, people….
A nice gesture
Samsung–one of the most frequent company names to show up on these pages–has patented a gesture-based interface for cell phones. Could be useful to people with some types of hand/arm disabilities; depending on its reliance on movement precision and its ability to be combined with audio output, could it be an improvement over touch screens for blind users?
Engadget: Samsung skips the touchscreen, patents gesture-based phone interface
Android deserves augmented reality
Android, Google’s mobile development platform, has attracted a really useful app. Enkin takes your location, camera input, and other info, and renders a customized meaningful overlay: where your car is in the lot, where the nearest noodle shop is, etc. This kind of personal guidance would be tremendously valuable for those with cognitive disabilities, permitting independent living and travel. Add audio output and you have a wayfinding device for blind users.
First swipe’s club
Nokia is first-to-market with a mobile phone with built-in short-range wireless technology: near-field communication (NFC). (Note that we just used up this month’s allotment of hyphens.) NFC will let you buy stuff just by passing the product and your phone near a checkout scanner, eliminating the credit card gymnastics that are difficult for some folks with reduced dexterity, and the signature pads that vex blind customers. Some security scenarios (Caution: sibilant account balance near zero) may complicate this a bit, but in most cases it’ll be a net gain in ease and convenience. Just watch those dollars drain away!
Nokia’s 6212 with Bluetooth NFC: Let the pairing revolution begin! - Engadget Mobile
Apple iPhone to support video chat?
More iPhone rumor mongering … Will the next generation iPhone from Apple have 2 cameras, one facing out and one facing the user? Will its 3G capabilities allow video chat? If so, stand by for exciting sign language video, direct and via relay service and remote video interpreting.
AppleInsider | Rumor: Digg founder claims 3G iPhone to do video chat
Thinking glass
Here’s another cognitive support design that’s (unfortunately) not even a prototype yet. Imagine a glass “frame” that you can point at anything, near or far. Then touch the object, building, person, or word that you’re interested in, and you will see information about it displayed on the frame: a price, a definition, or a birthday. The proposed system uses the device itself for image collection and processing, and a remote semantic search engine for deeply contextual meaning, accessed wirelessly. Build it into my eyeglasses and I’ll buy it.
Bluetooth joystick
Zeemote is a tiny controller that takes the little “joystick” button seen on several laptop models and plants it onto a Bluetooth device. Currently used for game play and Internet navigation on mobile phones; wonder if it could also be used with standard computers? In any case, it might be a useful mousing device for people with very limited range of motion in their hands.