Tag: BLIND

The Web is teeming with the unrealized ideas of both students and established designers who set out to produce astonishing renderings and prototypes for unusual products. Unfortunately, due to the lack of time, money, or technology, many of those products never progress from the planning stages to the mass market. But that doesn't mean we can't salivate over them, nevertheless. According to ...

What's harder than beating a tortuously long 'Zelda' game? Doing it blind. Just ask Jordan Verner. Two years and over 100,000 keystrokes after he set out on his bold mission, the blind student from Canada has finally conquered 'Ocarina of Time,' the first Nintendo 64 entry in the Zelda franchise. But he couldn't have done it without a little help from some total strangers. It all started when ...

Share Hiking the Appalachian Trail is no small feat. Its 2,174 miles of winding trail is steep, rocky, and occasionally treacherous. If you manage to walk the length of it in one shot, it constitutes a badge of courage. If you do it without ever being able to see the ground in front of you, well, that's newsworthy. Mike Hanson is an avid outdoorsman, a bit of a gadget hound, and ...

There's a load of great tech news happening out there every day, and, unfortunately, we just can't cover it all. Here are a few of the other noteworthy things we saw today on our never-ending journey through the wild, wild Web. Enjoy some masterful Photoshopping and LOLs in our new favorite blog: 'Nicolas Cage as, Well, Everyone.' [Nic Cage as Everyone, via: Urlesque] From MafiaBoy to ...

Despite a function on the Kindle that reads text aloud, two universities and an advocacy group for the visually impaired adopted a staunch anti-Kindle stance Wednesday. According to an Associated Press report, the University of Wisconsin - Madison and Syracuse University won't invest in more electronic readers for college students because the audio feature is too difficult for a visually impaired ...

Louis Braille, the man that invented the system of raised bumps that allow the blind to read, will celebrate his 200th birthday this year. His gift to the world, Braille, allows the sight-deficient to live relatively normal lives, reading elevator signs and ordering from the menu at certain restaurants. However, in the increasingly touchscreen-reliant, wireless world, the blind are at a loss. MP3 ...

Seeing-eye dogs may soon be looking for work as ordinary house pets, thanks to the development of a new "smart" walking cane. An engineering professor and his five students at Central Michigan University have developed a cane with a navigational system to aid the visually impaired. According to Newsvine, the Smart Cane uses Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology (the same technology ...

digg_url = 'http://digg.com/gadgets/Researchers_develop_braille_for_vibrating_touchscreen_device'; In braille, a character is made up of six dots laid out on a two by three matrix -- not something that can really be conveyed using capacitive touchscreen technology. Working with a Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, researchers in Finland have developed a method for piezoelectric touchscreen devices that ...

Last week at CES, advocates for the blind -- music icon Stevie Wonder among them -- discussed the future of blind-accessible electronics, according to a Reuters report. While Wonder cited an iPod and BlackBerry as gadgets he regularly uses and enjoys, he still finds plenty of room for improvement in regards to gadgets' becoming more accessible to blind consumers. "If you can take those few steps ...

Gadgets for the visually impaired are nothing new, but the Touch Sight camera is one of the most unique we've seen. Designed to be held against the forehead, the camera doesn't have an LCD, but instead displays a three-dimensional representation of the image on a built-in Braille screen and records three seconds of audio to assist users in locating and managing shots. Just a concept for now, but ...

The Internet is supposed to be the great equalizer. Race, color, creed, class, and physical handicap are supposed to of no impediment on the Web. Unfortunately, the blind face great obstacles in getting online, especially from public computers, like those in a library or Internet cafe. Screen reading software is rarely installed on these PCs, and portable options are often prohibitively ...

The blind have long been criticizing our bills of various denominations thanks to their identical size, shape, and feel, which makes them impossible to tell apart for those with limited or no sight. Now, a potential solution is coming from a very common source: the camera phone in your pocket. Computer software has long been able to identify characters or faces in pictures, meaning telling a $1 ...