Product and Technology

NASA Unveils Cosmic Images Book in Braille for Blind Readers

At a ceremony at the National Federation of the Blind, NASA unveiled a new book that brings majestic images taken by its Great Observatories to the fingertips of the blind.

South Africa to receive electric braille machine in February

A new electric brailler for visually impaired people will be available in the country in February, says the South African National Council for the Blind (SANCB).

Software standard makes 'reading' easier for the blind

Microsoft Corp. and a consortium that promotes open standards for “digital talking books” are set to release to the open source community specifications that would allow visually impaired people to navigate through multimedia content.

Microsoft and the Daisy (Digital Accessible Information System) Consortium have been collaborating on a free, downloadable plug-in for Microsoft Word that would convert open Extensible Markup Language (openXML)-supported documents into a friendlier format accessible to people with visual, physical, perceptual, cognitive or even learning disability.

Cell phone can read documents for blind

BALTIMORE (AP) — Chris Danielsen fidgets with the cell phone, holding it over a 20 bill.

"Detecting orientation, processing U.S. currency image," the phone says in a flat monotone before Danielsen snaps a photo. A few seconds later, the phone says, "Twenty dollars."

Danielsen, a spokesman for the National Federation of the Blind, is holding the next generation of computerized aids for the blind and visually impaired.

Replay AV is nominated for the best software for the blind and visually impaired

Applian Technologies' Replay AV was the only mainstream software nominated in the Best Software category in the Blind Bargains 2007 Access Awards last week. The other software nominated in the best software category was specifically designed for blind users. Although, Replay AV didn't win the award the program's inclusion in the top four Best Software category is a testament to the efforts Applian Technologies has put into making their products accessible to the blind.

Talking books for blind children

A master degree student has developed talking books for the blind and is willing to disseminate the method to making them for others to produce teaching materials for the blind.

The blind students can hear birds chirping and learn the information of each kind of bird by touching the Braille alphabet and reliefs of bird pictures. Self-learning with talking books makes it fun for children. Before these books, they thought the sound of bird’s chirping was all similar.

"Bionic" Contact Lens May Create Tiny Personal Displays

A new contact lens embedded with electronic circuits could be the seed for "bionic eyes" that can see displays overlaid on a person's field of view, researchers say.

The minute circuitry could aid the vision-impaired or could be used to create tiny but discernible readouts offering data such as driving directions or on-the-go Web surfing.

Researchers at the University of Washington created the flexible, biologically safe lens—the first of its kind—using nano-scale manufacturing techniques.

Zen PC concept is for the visually impaired

Take one part MacBook Air, one part Microsoft Surface and some 3D "z-axis" interaction and you have the Zen PC concept. The Zen PC is being labeled a sandbox PC. The unique nature of the tablet-like PC allows for users to operate the PC without the use of eyes because everything is done with an active surface that changes texture as you operate.

Braille Teacher to light up the lives of the blind

TwoQatari scientists have achieved a milestone by inventing a uniquelanguage tool for teaching blind people in Qatar and other parts of theworld.

Qatar'sAl Noor Institute for the Blind (NIB) unveiled 'the Braille Teacher', asimple learning tool for families to use for teaching blind person howto read and write Braille, at a ceremony held at Sharq Spa and Villagethis week.

Welsh language technology to help blind in India

A UK University has come out with a speech recognition technology for languages used in India and Sri Lanka.

The Language Technologies Unit at the Bangor University, Wales, has adapted some of its speech recognition technology for popular languages of the two nations.

The technology adapted to various Indian languages would help blind people communicate better with the outside world as it converts spoken words into machine-readable input.