Slashdot Mirror
Braille PDA/Phone
awtbfb writes "ALVA B.V. has released details on their Mobile Phone Organizer 5500. This combination tri-band GSM phone and Windows CE.net PDA does not yet include GPRS, but it is supposedly in the works. Release dates are this summer. It's only been a year since this was requested in askslashdot."
Yet another cellphone to add to the collection of geek gifts...It looks good to me.
- nick
.:. .. ::: .. : ::. .
.. .:
.
: : .
# Important Stuff: Please try to keep posts on topic.
# Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads.
# Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said.
# Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about.
# Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page)
How does Caller ID work if you are blind? Have the phone speak the caller's name? Maybe a touch pad with moveable nails that can do a sequence of braille letters? That would be pretty cool.
Now all we need are mobile PDA/phones for the deaf... oh, wait.
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
I dated a blind woman in the late 80s who had a handheld far more functionally capable than most anything available nowadays (something about not having to worry about graphics...). The one she used was called a "Braille'n'Speak" by Blaise (?). Dumb name, nifty device. It's apparantly been far outpaced by the compatition nowadays (well, it's been 15 years). Basically, it's a standard braille keyboard (a chording keyboard invented decades ago) with seven keys, a speaker, headphone jack and a serial port, all in a small package. It allowed the user to interface it to a computer and use it for speech synthesis. This was the age of DOS (and BBSes, where she and most of the blind community were), so it was easy to tie into the BIOS and redirect text. You could take notes, and import and export text files. All the users I saw who used it cranked up the speed of the speech until, to a non-user, it sounded like an unintelligable warble. This allowed the users (who were used to it), to whip though gobs of text as fast or faster than many people could read. Now, if this was state of the art in the late 80s, I'd imagine that there are some significantly more advanced models. BTW - try IRC, as I've run into several VI users in various channels (VI as in visually impaired, not the editor). Heck, one of the serverops on Slashnet is legally blind. BTW - if any blind people used text2b.com or text2b2.com (those aren't web sites, they are apps - remember when dot com meant an executable file?), I wrote those about that time... I released 'em as shareware and got a few hundred bucks, mostly from schools. Text to braille and text to grade 2 braille, pretty much for use as printer filters. I also had a semiworking MIDI to braille sheet music app. All written in Mix Power C.
Finally a solution to keep people from yelling into their phones,
and you have to learn braille to use it?
oh wait, I see....
Punctanym: alternate spelling of words using punctuation or numerals in place of some or all of its letters; see 'leet'
People taking there hands off the steering wheel to talk on one of these things...
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
The phone includes a one line braille display, which is essentially that.
Almost forgot, just for a second, that Microsoft is a marketing behemoth first and a software developer second.
Have you ever looked at how much Braille notetakers go for? They start at around US$1000 and go up from there. I realize there's a limited market for braille products and the companies have to recoup R&D costs, but it really seems like this market gets price gouged. So what's this beauty gonna cost? US$5000?
Hi,
I have a friend who I like to refer to as a Vampire, actually technically only half of a vampire.
She has porphyria which is a disease which makes it so that when light (mainly blue and green spectrum) strikes any part of her body it kills off red blood cells in that area. She says it feels like a sunburn of sorts.
What it basically boils down to is that she has been stuck in the dark in her basement for almost a year now. The condition just keeps getting worse for her.
The condition is so bad now that she can only sit in front of her laptop for like 20 minutes or so before she starts feeling effects. And this is with two sheets of tinting on the screen and with the background of all the windows, etc. set to black and the text set to red.
Over the past few weeks I've been trying to do some research for her to help her find solutions.
This device might have possibility some for her. Of course she can see just fine, but if her condition gets much worse she's gonna have to start living life in a manner akin to how a blind person lives life. In some respects, of course, some not.
Has anybody out there seen one? Does it work? What does it do with something like a PDF? Does it require some sort of screen scraper software?
Any experiences would be appreciated. I cannot believe this post appeared today, I was just thinking last night about possibly submitting an "Ask Slashdot".
Thanks,
OYAHHH
Caution: Contents under pressure
Feel Me Now?
Five years ago, I had to learn Graffiti to be cool. Now I need to learn Braille so that I can keep up with the latest gadget. What will they come up with next -- Morse Code?
That thing looks a rather large; considering the specs sound a lot like that PocketPC phone (it runs WinCE and has an X-Scale proc), I wouldn't think it would be that big. I realize that braille display takes up space, but over a pound of space? How can you call that thing "mobile"?
Between the M505 and the old Game Boy Advance flubs, they should know how important it is to have a back-lit screen.
I invented a brail phone long ago and demand this company cease their blatant misuse of my patent. Granted, our phones may be a bit different, but that makes no difference in the end. My model was slightly different: instead of a combination phone/pda, though I went for something functional yet simple.
I took a sturdy brick and welded an old brail-teletype on it. With an embedded 8086 executing off of manufacturer-refuse rom chips, it worked great. Sure, implementing the crude Turing algorithms was a bit painful, but we just claimed a "93.2% accuracy" for the devices. The blind people simply skipped over the mistakes and made assumptions as to what was being said.
I'll never forget the fond memories of those days. Watching the faces of the blind light up as they carried out their (unknown to them) imaginary conversations. Believe you me, that time I heard little Billy exclaim: "Mommy I love you too!"; I almost cried. Or that time Jimmy used his first call to order himself a pizza. Every time a car drove by he'd ask: "guys, is that the pizza man?". We never had the heart to tell him the truth. What was even more enjoyable was when he called back to register his complaint! A blind man arguing with a turing algorithm is not a pretty sight. Precious memories.
Great. It's bad enough when the sighted try to drive and talk on their cellphone/PDA combos at the same time. I can only imagine what's going to happen to our nation's roadways once the blind drivers start doing the same...
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)