Mouse Lets Blind "see" Graphics

mblase writes "CNN.com reports on an Israeli company that has developed a "mouse" for the blind that enables them to "see" web graphics. The VirTouch Mouse (VTM) has three fingertip-sized arrays of 32 pins each that rise and fall depending on how white, black, or grey a particular part of the screen is. According to reactions posted on the company Web site, 25 out of 26 users reported "good" or "very good" success with the device. This could be the first step in making the Web truly accessible to the blind; now if only we could eliminate all-Flash sites as well."

Comments

Odd for them to develop this...

[griffjon]

I find it odd that the Israeli's are developing this, due to their history with blind Arab hackers.

No. Really.

Israeli prosecutors say Munther and Muzhir Badir, two young and mischievous
Israeli Arab brothers, managed to tap into an Israeli Defense Force
radio-station switchboard last year and make international phone calls.
Piercing such sensitive networks would seem to be an achievement for two
members of Israel's marginalized Arab community - especially since the
brothers, who aren't college-educated, have been blind since birth. Even
prosecutor Doron Porat calls Munther Badir, the alleged "cybercrime"
ringleader who prosecutors say had other accomplices, a "genius ... who has
clearly overcome this disability."
http://www.infowar.com/hacker/99/hack_102199b_j. sh tml

Interesting Notion

[AntiFreeze]

I'm wonderring about this in a slightly different fashion. "Feeling" graphics aside, I wonder how this could be used to help the blind read web pages. Couldn't this technology be used just as easily to scan the ascii character at the cursor and render it in brail, litterally at the person's fingertips?

I can see many uses for this technology. If nothing else, it would make things like USENET directly accessable to the blind.

Now, of course, I have a vested interest in this, because my grandfather was both blind and brilliant, and would have substantially benefitted from technology like this.

Of couse, there are a bunch of technical problems with turning a web page into brail, like, how does one find the start of the text? How can one be expected to drag the mouse in a straight line over the text so as to not scramble the contents of what they're reading? But I think these questions can be solved. I truly think this holds vast potential, so congrats to the company behind this!

---

Hmmm, how about a braille font?

[Illserve]

I wonder if you force your browser to display all characters in braille(sp?) if this device would have sufficient resolution to allow one to read a web page?

It still might be cumbersome for reading a long file, but for navigating pages with sidebars, such as slashdot, it could work fairly well.

Other adaptations to browsers could include special color enhancement for the borders of buttons and menus that caused them to be easily identifiable by feel.

I'm evisioning a pre-installed blind-mode for web browsers that one could activate with standards across platforms.

Such modifications could also be applied to desktop themes for windows Mac or Unix systems.

Re:We can do better than this

[Ungrounded Lightning]

For example, have the affected person wear a video camera on their head [helmet cam?]. The blind person could carry a higher resolution "pad" with maybe 640x480 pins representing the image from the camera. People could use their hands to "see" whatever the camera is pointing at. I might suggest a hands free device, such as one which can be strapped to a person's back, but I don't think there are proper nerves there to sense a high-resolution image.

In fact exactly this was tried in a lab, and worked like a charm. There are adequate nerves in the back - you just have to move the pins farther apart. (Although the resolution may be low enough that you can only do a very narrow image... The test setup only used a small number of vibrating pins. This was quite some time ago, when the equipment was big, custom, and expensive.)

An experimental accident gave an interesting insight into the rewiring abilities of the brain. The camera was on a tripod, and during one of the experiments it tipped over and fell into what it was viewing. The experimental subject, blind from birth, reflexively put his hands in front of his eyes.

That's a very strong indication that the signals from the back had been re-routed into the pathways normally used to process images, implying all that specialized neruoprocessing will be available for even the blind-from-birth to use on images converted to touch. Imagine blind baseball players, or blind drivers as safe as the run-of-the-mill driver.

Afterward the subject commented that for the first time in his life he had a referrent for the word "looming".

Yup, they ARE using it for porn...

[isaac_akira]

Check out the page with the test graphics on it:

http://virtouch.com/tests.htm

The last one is obviously a naked chick and something from alt.sex.furries (if you don't know, you probobly don't want to).

Good for blind, bad for web.

[daemonenwind]

I like the idea that computers are being made more usuable for everyone. It's a shame that the main interface to a computer has to be a visually-oriented mechanisim, since so many of us either have problems with vision or are developing them from using computers.

On the other hand, (no pun intended) it's yet another friggin' standard we have to code web pages for. We already have Netscape vs. Microsoft, Computer vs. PDA/Portable, and options like XML and Javascript. Now we have something else? Arrgh!

It would be better if websites could be more focused, so that bandwith use by individual pages could be more limited, or at least so that coding could be more focused.

Still, who wouldn't want to feel your opponent in UT get fragged? That could be pretty cool!

Question?

[syrupMatt]

Okay, while I'm not debating that this is a great thing, I have a few ponderances.

One, I understand that the field of pins acts as a representational map of an image, and reacts to color depths(?). However, how does this help on a text/image page, where there are muitiple images with different functions?

Two, as far as the audio component is concerned, what does it draw its instructions from, in regards to web/technology use? ALT tags? The NAME property? Therefore, the technology is only as foolproof as the careless web designer who forgets to fill out alt tags?

Three, wouldn't image maps drive this thing nutty?

Such as I said, I think this is a marvelous idea. However, those questions seemed to jump instantly to mind on its ability to be a viable technology to bring graphic-based interfaces to the blind.

This could traumatize the blind

[banuaba]

Can you imagine some blind guy blundering in to goatsex and thinking 'I just shoved my finger in that guy's ass!'

Noise of gun being put into mouth
Brant

We can do better than this

[Decimal Dave]

This technology is fairly impressive, but I think that it should be extended to serve as a more general solution to blindness. For example, have the affected person wear a video camera on their head [helmet cam?]. The blind person could carry a higher resolution "pad" with maybe 640x480 pins representing the image from the camera. People could use their hands to "see" whatever the camera is pointing at. I might suggest a hands free device, such as one which can be strapped to a person's back, but I don't think there are proper nerves there to sense a high-resolution image.


"Leave the strategizing to those of use with planet-sized brains." -Tycho