Funny you should say that.. We (my former classmate and I) built a prototype for that a year ago, but life happened and I never got around to making it into a product. If anyone entrepreneurial is interested in solving that problem (especially for blind people!), I'd love to make it happen. :)
That is so cool! I had thought of a similar system for blind people but someone had actually went out and built it already. I wish I could look at their source code as it seems like they are doing some really cool stuff under the hood
I am not blind but might have the chance to offer you a dev job (related to blindness). Here's the product we are working on: http://horus.tech
Just send me an email at saverio at horus dot tech if interested
I think a better interface for computers for blind people would be really cool. I have a lot of ideas but without a bunch of money saved up or a concrete plan, I don't really have the time, energy to spend my little off time researching and making prototypes
Actually, if the tools become real tools (instead of a page representing a layer, some 3d printet thing with a specific look and feel) this could, theoretically, become accessible for the blind. People with moving impairments will have it much harder, though.
Its been on my back burner for a decade. I think we can do a lot better than the ones on the market. I wrote up an idea I had for it (permissive license, I just want the thing to exist)
What excites me about this approach is that it has the potential to make demos that are also accessible to blind people. It would take some work though, possibly even including support from browsers and screen readers. The pseudo-focus and pseudo-caret features in particular are problematic. Also, blind people might need a playback mode that advances the recording manually frame by frame (only counting frames that actually include changes), rather than playing back in real time.
I'm making an open source, programmable tactile display called PinThing. Like the classic "Pin Art" pinscreen desk toy, but each pin is motorized and programmable.
I didn't design PinThing specifically for people with blindness, but since it's a real 3D display, it could be useful as a 3D display for shapes, graphs... or even as a real 3D output display for Scratch.
For awhile, this has been a side/passion project, but if there's interest, I'd love to get them a prototype.
Don't things only rich people will buy it e.g. I think it can be very useful for blind people especially those who recently got blind and haven't adapted yet.
I would be happy to hear opinion of any developer here on HN that is blind if they might find this tech appealing and useful.
I've been thinking about how to approach the blind community with the idea. My feeling right now is I should at least have something to "try out" to give them a sense of what I'm after. As soon as I figure out how to get the "reader" down to a size where I feel good about its usability (doesn't matter too much if wires are sticking out etc.) I just want the actual interface to be an appropriate size.
Another thing that is also "pie in the sky" but I think another reason I'm so interested is I think there are alot of applications (some reasonable today, but some that may be pushing the boundaries of what we may think of today).
I can imagine (at low enough cost, and by perfecting the mechanics) an entire industry could be born around the idea of "consuming information tactilely". Even for sighted people.
I wonder if it might be worthwhile for sighted developers to set up a system that a blind person would use and then blindfold themselves, and start using the system...
Perhaps that would make it easier for us to develop software that works well for blind people?
reply