Written by Ravi Mandalia

Ravi Mandalia has cleared his Associate – (ISC)2 Exams and is an ISO 27001:2005 Lead Auditor. He has a Masters in Network Security from…
.21 February, 2012app store text messaging brailletouch sms

A group of researchers at Georgia Tech has developed an app, designed for helping out blind people to write and read text messages using touch screen mobile devices.

The researchers claim that the new app allows users to type up to 6 times faster than all other available techniques designed for enabling texting without sight.

There are a number of applications are already available in the market including the likes of Apple’s VoiceOver technology that help visually impaired individuals to text using touchscreen devices. However, most of the times, these existing methods are too slow for one to use effectively.

“Users who know how to type Braille well never move their hands,” explained Mario Romero, lead researcher on the project”, said Mario Romero, one of the lead researchers on the project reports BBC News.

The new offering, dubbed BrailleTouch, is likely to be rolled out some time during the next couple of weeks or so. It basically offers a unique system that allows a user to control the touchscreen using six fingers, and without requiring any hand movement whatsoever for a smooth operation.

“When users hold the phone they hold the phone with the screen facing away from them in landscape mode. They wrap the index, middle and ring finger in each hand around the phone,” he added further.

“It’s not like the Qwerty keyboard where you move up and down. That’s why this thing works – we can get away with only six keys,” he added.

See also http://peanutandphouka.wordpress.com/2012/02/21/1060/

Reproduced from http://www.itproportal.com/2012/02/21/brailletouch-app-to-help-visually-impaired-send-text-messages/