The New Jersey Institute of Technology will host its second-annual TechQuest and Innovation Day this Friday, April 11, from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
I refer to the commentary “Right time to step towards a self-service society” (March 18). I am visually impaired and would say that our front-line departments such as at immigration and airport check-in counters, hospitals and polyclinics, banks, etc, even with the person in attendance, do not assist us to know when our turn is.
My suggestion for the authorities is that they help provide relevant voice assistive technology or gadgets, so that we can embrace self-service. Spare some thought for the blind.
A wearable device developed by a 23-year-old Indian based in Kerala has just concluded an overwhelmingly successful campaign on crowdfunding platform Indiegogo. Fin, a tiny hardware product that you can wear on your thumb as a ring and which converts your whole palm into a gesture interface, has raised about $200,000 from some 1,600 people around the world who have pre-ordered the product.
Enhancing accessibility for people with disabilities is an insightful process. Often, solutions designed for a specific problem will improve life for everyone. Take automatic door openers, for example. Anyone with their hands full can push that button and enter a building more easily.
Digital accessibility matters, too. Websites as well as buildings can comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. In addition to website design, apps and devices are improving experiences for differently-abled people across the internet.
There are around 70 million people with disabilities in India, with half of them being under the age of 30. This was one of the facts that came up at the recent Techshare India, a pan-India disability conference and event, which took place on February 13 and 14.
MIT Media Lab has released a video demonstrating wearable technology that could help people with visual impairments read more easily.
Wearers of “FingerReader” move their fingers over words on a page, and the device reads the text back to them. “The FingerReader algorithm knows to detect and give feedback when the user veers away from the baseline of the text,” according to its website.
Last week, in the centre of a crammed Goregaon office, a skull served as a soft toy. People patted its blue head on the way to their desks and returned its toothy smile. Despite having two holes for eyes, no cheeks and a jaw held together by rubberbands, it looked inviting. Each part of its face boasted braille letters, so when the visually impaired Bhavesh Shah ran his fingers across its yellow forehead, he could tell it was the "frontal lobe."
In the past few years, we have seen several devices designed to help to guide visually impaired. Now, two Indian techies have created a shoe-smartphone combination navigation device - an insole which can be slipped into any footwear for the blind.
The Secunderabad duo, Anirudh Sharma, a postgraduate from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Krispian Lawrence, a graduate from University of Michigan, have invented a smart-footwear called Le Chal (Hindi for 'take me there').
Researchers from the Faculty of Engineering at Israel's Bar Ilan University have developed a prototype contact lens that could enable the visually impaired to see the world in a whole new light. Developed by Professor Zeev Zalevsky, the contact lens processes digital images and translates them into tactile sensations which can then be felt on the user's cornea, allowing them to form a picture of their physical surroundings.
At a programme organised in the Lake City today by Inclusive Empowerment Centre Nepal, an organisation working for visually disabled people, Computer Association Nepal (CAN) Kaski chapter General Secretary Achyut Khaniya made public the latest version of the software.
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