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Handhelds Hardware

Braille PDA/Phone 83

Posted by michael from the ask-and-ye-shall dept.
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."
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Braille PDA/Phone More

Braille PDA/Phone

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  • Yet another toy... (Score:4, Funny)

    by VaultX ( 146268 ) <[moc.liamg] [ta] [noslenn]> on Friday April 11, 2003 @08:31PM (#5714335)
    Yet another cellphone to add to the collection of geek gifts...It looks good to me.

  • fp (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 11, 2003 @08:31PM (#5714337)
    .:. .. ::: .. : ::. .

    . ..
    : : . .:

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  • Caller ID (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 11, 2003 @08:34PM (#5714347)
    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.
    • Maybe a touch pad with moveable nails that can do a sequence of braille letters

      The phone includes a one line braille display, which is essentially that.

    • Re:Caller ID (Score:4, Informative)

      by jargoone ( 166102 ) on Friday April 11, 2003 @09:42PM (#5714556)
      My wife's phone, a Sanyo 4700, has something that's like speaking caller ID. It matches the caller ID with a phone book entry if possible, and speaks the name that you enter with the phonebook entry.

      And if you think moveable nails are neat, you should see a whole refreshable braille display [freedomscientific.com]. I work with a guy that codes C all day long using one of these. It's truly amazing how people can adapt.
    • Well, there are callerID units out there that speak the number...I believe Magnavox made one. The unit I saw wasn't marketed towards blind people-the marketing stratagy was that you didn't have to go to your phone to find out the number (I don't think it read names) and it was relatively inexpensive-under $50 IIRC.
  • Now all we need are mobile PDA/phones for the deaf... oh, wait.

    • Re:Great progress! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by inode_buddha ( 576844 ) on Friday April 11, 2003 @09:34PM (#5714545) Journal
      Actually, I *am* deaf. It would be nice to get tty service anywhere, but it depends on your provider. Verizon wants up to $500 for the equipment/service. No, you don't get a cash bonus from the gov't (or anyone else), you work 5 days a week like everyone else. Meanwhile, I'm reviewing some ways to do speech to text and text to speech, falling asleep reading commercial API's for my linux boxes. It's gonna be interesting to try and synthesize my own voice from memory. (thank you, sounblaster!)

      I currently use hearing aids, but 120 dB of graphical EQ only goes so far, especially in a work environment. Implants were vetoed by the surgeon's evaluation team - I adapted too well by visual cues, and fake normal conversation well enough. Everybody thinks it's an obscure Brit accent, whan it's actually a deaf American accent.

      You have *no* idea how frustrating it is when the whole world *assumes* you use the phone. Try to get someone close to you to call your bank on your behalf. You will end up giving power of attorney over you, because that's the only way they'll deal with it. This applies for most business scenarios.

      For me the phone is a useless expense, except for data.
    • Now all we need are mobile PDA/phones for the deaf... oh, wait.

      About two decades ago I read about how some researchers tought themselves to read sound-frequency charts (on paper) and know what the speaker was saying. I then conceived of using a portable Newton-like device to display such graphs in real-time. Deaf people could learn to interpret such charts to know what people are saying.

      Sample illustration of device [geocities.com]
    • Actually, the current problem for deaf mobile phone users is that while most modern mobile phones and networks support TTY signals (as required by the FCC), there is still no phone with an integrated TTY. As such, you need to carry a portable TTY with you and plug it into the phone. The fact that the most commonly used TTY protocol is well below typical modem speeds (I can type faster than the text is transmitted) adds to the technical challenge.

      Furthermore, some phones produce unwanted interference in nea
    • What's wrong with the deaf community using cellphones? They're very common here. There's even pricing plans for texting only.

      b.

  • My Thoughts (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 11, 2003 @08:42PM (#5714371)
    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.

    • .com and .exe (Score:2, Interesting)

      by SHEENmaster ( 581283 )
      I remember something aboout .com being the "tiny" build target, and .exe for "medium" and "large." I left windows before I seriously got into C/C++ programming. Can anyone explain the diferrence?

      Here [tifaq.com] is an article on chording keyboards. It seems like something useful for palmtops; a pic and some momentary pushbottons could make a nice serial device for my Zaurus.
      • .com - whole prog was loaded directly into a 64Kb segment, and executed. Execution started with the first byte of the program. There was no way you could use more. (both data and code).

        .exe - you could use more than one segment for data, and code. However, getting a single piece of data larger than 64Kb was still a pain IIRC. In this, there was a block of data at the beginning specifying the number of segments used, etc.

        Oh yeah, going above 640Kb was reserved strictly for the SM fans. One had to deal w

  • I don't think it will catch on (Score:5, Funny)

    by LuxFX ( 220822 ) on Friday April 11, 2003 @08:46PM (#5714377) Homepage Journal
    Finally a solution to keep people from yelling into their phones,
    and you have to learn braille to use it?

    oh wait, I see....

  • That's all we need... (Score:5, Funny)

    by ocie ( 6659 ) on Friday April 11, 2003 @08:46PM (#5714380) Homepage
    People taking there hands off the steering wheel to talk on one of these things...

  • Post.net (Score:3, Funny)

    by mao che minh ( 611166 ) on Friday April 11, 2003 @08:51PM (#5714400) Journal
    WinCE.net. *snorts*

    Almost forgot, just for a second, that Microsoft is a marketing behemoth first and a software developer second.

    • WinCE.net. *snorts*

      Almost forgot, just for a second, that Microsoft is a marketing behemoth first and a software developer second.

      Pardon my lack of increduelty, but aren't low power portable devices exactly the sort of thing that the .Net paradigm is a good idea for? Supposedly, .Net encourages modularization so that one can easily distribute processing over a wide area. So you've got a small portable wirless device which, necessarily, has to have low power consumption, which means it has to ha

  • 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?
    • 5K? Easily.

      I had a blind friend that used a GPS with a computer synthesized voice which he primarily used for being able to get around easily in the city without assistance.

      As I recall, it set him back several grand. A used car would have cost him less -- but of course, he would not have been able to drive it.

      Products like these are very niche market, so they are going to be expensive. There's not a lot that can be done about it, I'm afraid.

    • This one is going for $3950 which is not that bad considering it functionality. It is the first braille PDA that has any reasonable data capabilities. A 20-cell braille display alone would go for $1500+.

      It still costs 10x what a similar unit goes for with a touch screen.

  • ...anyone needing one of these won't be interested in the D-Link DVC-1000 Videophone review.

  • Anybody seen one? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by OYAHHH ( 322809 ) on Friday April 11, 2003 @09:11PM (#5714469)
    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
    • 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.....The condition is so bad now that she can only sit in front of her laptop for like 20 minutes or so...

      Does this include her inner eye, or just skin? What if she wore a face-mask with eye-holes or a binocular-like thing?
    • The same company also makes keyboards with braille displays for regular computers. Good sites to visit on the topic of computer access for the blind are:

      Trace Center [wisc.edu]
      Smith-Kettlewell RERC [ski.org]
      Section 508 [section508.gov]
      W3C's WAI [w3.org]
      National Center for Accessible Media [wgbh.org]

      If you are in the States, see if there is a local Independent Living Center (sometimes also called Center for Independent Living). These offer support and information for people with disabilities in the local community.

      On a separate note, if she is not se
  • More or less off-topic.

    Several years ago I had a friend who worked in a gaming shop. One of the things he carried, were Braille playing cards... ...in different colours.
    • I realize that you were pointing out how ridiculous it was to vary the color on the playing cards, but I ask you this: How do you prevent your dealer from cheating in such a game? Obviously, anyone dealing from the bottom of the deck is probably cheating...but how do you tell if you're blind? For that matter, even if you're sighted, he's still going to have a decent idea what cards you don't have since he knows what cards were in the middle whenever the deck was cut (and, therefore, not near the top).
    • Perhaps the manufacturer of said cards thought that, perhaps, blind persons would like to play cards with "normal" (I hate this word) people? I've seen "dual purpose" cards in the past, both printed and Braille-embossed.

      To a disabled person it is very important to be able to live a life as normal as possible, so anything that can make them feel less handicaped is a good thing. Gee, just having a cast on one of your limbs will make you realize how bad everything is when you can't use both your arms and legs

  • Can You (Score:4, Funny)

    by The Dobber ( 576407 ) on Friday April 11, 2003 @09:24PM (#5714506)

    Feel Me Now?


  • This product will make its money not on the deaf, who are few in number, but on regular geeks who realize the potential of a device that allows them to carry their pr0n anywhere in a tactile format. It gives a whole new meaning to the term "palm pilot."

  • 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?

  • This might actually be useful, in case you're n00b enough to take a sip from your methanol powered laptop [slashdot.org]. ;-)

  • Size? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by atc24 ( 664947 ) on Friday April 11, 2003 @09:32PM (#5714535)
    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"?

    • Re:Size? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by mcmay ( 59905 )

      How can you call that thing "mobile"?

      When you start out having one thing that's bigger (e.g., your Braille&Speak or other such device), and needing a second device to match its functionality (i.e., a phone, and not just any phone, but one that's usable without the display) you can call just about anything "more mobile."

      Blind computer users don't often have the luxury of taking advantages of economies of scale. That is, they're used to things being bigger and more expensive, because the R&D cost

  • Between the M505 and the old Game Boy Advance flubs, they should know how important it is to have a back-lit screen.

  • I have prior art! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 11, 2003 @09:53PM (#5714591)
    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.
  • what's the point of braille input if you still can't read the output?
  • I assume that this is device for the users that can hear, otherwise it wouldn't have a headset. Then wouldn't it be easier if the phone just read memos, appointments, SMS messages and so on?

    On the other hand, people who are both deaf and blind probably need a pager rather than a cell phone.

    I also feel CE.net is an overkill for what the device is doing. Think about it, most of CE code is *visual* user interface.

  • Good lord... (Score:3, Funny)

    by InterruptDescriptorT ( 531083 ) on Friday April 11, 2003 @10:25PM (#5714664) Homepage
    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...
  • here [nettwerkamerica.com]
  • ok, it costs $5k.

    But lets be honest, outside the world of vision, with monitors, LCD screens and so forth there hasn't been hardly any headway made for the other senses.

    I'd like to see this stuff on my Zaurus, on my keyboard, on the TV and everywhere.

    Thanks blind people, at least you make it happen.
  • Can you feel me now?

    Can you feel me now?

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