iPhone Braille Touch app revolutionize texting
Read Braille on iPhone ? Technology just keeps astounding me about when I think yes they can do all sorts of things then something like this comes along and blows my mind.It ios actually based off of Computer Braille, a system of typing that allows users to input up to 63 characters through pressing different combinations of just six buttons.And you thought texting was hard with fat fingers…
Could Braille Touch app revolutionize texting?
Would anyone describe typing on an iPhone as a pleasant experience?
I think the answer lies in all those “sent from iPhone, excuse any iTypos” signatures out there.
Here to texters’ rescue is Braille Touch, a new app that enables people to type messages on an Android or iOS touch screen without having to look down.
The app is designed for people who are visually impaired, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t use it too.
“We have become slaves to keyboards that are too small and that have too many buttons,” Mario Romero, a post-doctoral fellow at Georgia Tech’s School for Interactive Computing and the lead researcher on a paper about Braille Touch, said in an interview with The Times. “Almost everyone has to look at the keyboard when they send a text message. We lose sight every time we text. And I don’t think that’s right.”
Braille Touch would change that. It is based on Computer Braille, a system of typing that allows users to input up to 63 characters through pressing different combinations of just six buttons — three on each side of the phone. Users of this new typing system hold the phone facing away from the body, using the middle three fingers of each hand to chord in letters, numbers and characters such as exclamation points and the “at” sign. Spaces and backspaces can be entered through gestures of flicking left or right on the phone.
In user tests conducted by the Georgia Tech researchers, some visually impaired people were able to reach up to 32 words per minute with 92% accuracy with a prototype app for the iPhone.
