Apple Researching Apple Watch Bands That Can Provide Information In Braille (theguardian.com) 41
According to Apple Insider, Apple is researching an Apple Watch band that could contain controllable protrusions to present tactile information on the surface. From the report: Apple has famously always researched providing accessibility features in its devices, whether or not it's profitable. However, so far there has been a limit to what the Apple Watch can do -- and its bands could have no accessibility features at all. "Tactile output for wearable device," is a newly granted US patent which aims to change that. Alongside the various things Siri can say aloud since the Apple Watch Series 3, there could now be Apple-designed bands that display Braille information.
While Apple wants its patent to cover any kind of electronic device possible, most of its descriptions and all of its drawings refer to the Apple Watch and to what Apple refers to as actuators. These are components that respond to a processor and cause other elements to move or rearrange. "[For example, a] wearable item comprises a flexible strap and actuators within the flexible strap," says the patent. "The actuators are configured to dynamically form protrusions along the flexible strap. The protrusions present tactilely-perceptible information." These protrusions are similar to the raised dots in Braille, but Apple says they needn't be confined to that one system. Rather than following the established patterns of whole words in Braille, the same protrusions could be configured to "also or instead be dynamically and/or selectively actuated to form [the] shapes of alphanumeric characters."
While Apple wants its patent to cover any kind of electronic device possible, most of its descriptions and all of its drawings refer to the Apple Watch and to what Apple refers to as actuators. These are components that respond to a processor and cause other elements to move or rearrange. "[For example, a] wearable item comprises a flexible strap and actuators within the flexible strap," says the patent. "The actuators are configured to dynamically form protrusions along the flexible strap. The protrusions present tactilely-perceptible information." These protrusions are similar to the raised dots in Braille, but Apple says they needn't be confined to that one system. Rather than following the established patterns of whole words in Braille, the same protrusions could be configured to "also or instead be dynamically and/or selectively actuated to form [the] shapes of alphanumeric characters."
Whelp (Score:3)
I was about to try and be clever and post "be sure to drink your Ovaltine" in braille here; but then I remembered that Slashdot doesn't support unicode.
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It can do ascii-art, which is more reliable than unicode.
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Not sure I am up to rendering a sentence in braille using ASCII art.
actually really interesting (Score:2)
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Re: actually really interesting (Score:2)
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I wouldn't have to wear earbuds or glance at my phone/watch to take it.
Tell us: How is having to use one hand to feel a wristband on the opposite wrist better/easier than glancing at a screen?
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How about you suspend "message reading" for a couple of minutes while you talk to them?
In your mind you're still being distracted and treating them as less important than your message.
Smart Move, Apple. (Score:2)
Re:Smart Move, Apple. (Score:4, Insightful)
Going after that juicy "blind watch wearers" demographic.
Or, giving a shit about a group of people whose needs are frequently ignored. I rather doubt Apple will be raking in the billions on this product.
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Ok so I'm the bad guy for pointing out that blind people can't read a watch.
No, you are a dick for whining about somebody doing something nice for blind people.
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Good to know. So i'm a dick, Apple is a non-profit humanitarian co-op charged with improving the lives of blind people and you are the sole moral arbiter of the universe.
Quite frankly, I don't care and neither do blind people. Being blind is hard enough without you getting religious about the company that made the braille terminal you are using. Tech brand religiosity is a luxury only sighted people can afford. Now go back to planning the next move in your holy war on everything Apple. Dumping on Apple for making a braille terminal isn't worth the firepower you are investing into pulverising them over it, it's just making you look like this guy: https://www.penny-arcade.com [penny-arcade.com]
Prior art? (Score:3)
What's the patent innovation, that it's on a strap?
Is "on a strap" going to be this decade's "on a computer" frivolous patent?
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"On a strap" first became popular when timepieces became small enough for personal use. That should not be possible to patent.
Unfortunately, granting patents has gotten very strange. Patent attorneys are highly paid because they've mastered an arcane bureaucracy full of unpublished rules and pitfalls. It's the breadth and depth of their knowledge of these rules. The result is that ther are many patents which are, frankly, fraudulent, but were granted nonetheless because their authors and their attorneys ski
Re: Prior art? (Score:2)
Re: Prior art? (Score:3)
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Really? Seriously? Have you looked at assistive technology? It's pretty amazing what you can do with a smartphone.
Also, did you know that most blind people (at least among the hundred-and-fifty or so that I've interviewed) don't read Braille, and don't have much interest in it? Why, you ask? Because almost anything read in printed Braille is better experienced through an audio recording (and from a manufacturing and storage standpoint, Braille is more expensive than audio recordings). When you're read
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I used to work in this space (assistive devices). To be fair to Apple, they are probably just getting a bunch of rubbish patents as a means of protecting themselves from all the other rubbish patents in the space. Sure, if they can sue some little guy into oblivion their attack dog lawyers will do it, but mostly they are concerned with the current incumbents in the market going after them once they are making billions off the apple watch braille. By having a stable of similarly pointless patents they can th
Accessibility? (Score:2)
Are we talking about the same Apple who was the solution for low visability people is run the computer in a low resolution mode? They could just have a properly tested option in the System Preferences that lets you set the system font to something much larger.
Link (Score:2)
This doesn't mean they are researching it (Score:1)
Will never happen (Score:2)
It's just a patent. Quick look at Wikipedia shows:
"In 1998 there were 57,425 legally blind students registered in the United States, but only 10% (5,461) of them used braille as their primary reading medium."
" in Britain (for example) out of the reported two million blind and low vision population, it is estimated that only around 15,000–20,000 people use braille"
There's just no market for it.
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And Microsoft probably has a smaller market for their Xbox Adaptive Controller.
Doesn't mean it isn't worth pursuing - if it makes someone's life just a bit easier.
Just because there's a small market now doesn't mean there won't be other people interested in the technology. Closed captions are primarily for deaf people, but that doesn't mean those who aren't deaf can't benefit from it. A watch strap that does Braille could be useful for sighted people as well. Perhaps you're in an environment where you don't
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And Microsoft probably has a smaller market for their Xbox Adaptive Controller.
Doesn't mean it isn't worth pursuing - if it makes someone's life just a bit easier.
Tell them that about a basic wireless mic. There's a potentially huge market and they refuse to even acknowledge the things exist. They had one for the 360 then completely ignored it this whole generation with your choice being wired mic or full on headphones. They don't even have to make one themselves if they don't want, just let generic ones connect but nope. Anyway, I digress, point is. Don't expect a company to do anything, obvious or obtuse. I can all but guarantee you the adaptive controller exists m
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It's around $100. It's not a lot of money (only a bit more expensive than a regular controller). The sensors do cost a lot more, but other than a few generic ones that Microsoft sells, they are often custom jobs anyways. Microsoft makes it stupidly easy to interface to it and if you want to adapt a regular controller, it'll cost more in effort.
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You're seriously underestimating how difficult it is to learn braille. No one is going to learn it because they don't want to look at the watch or want to cheat at exams. I mean, most of blind people don't use it. It's not because they don't want to spend couple days learning it. It's because it's hard.
I learned to read Arabic some time ago. It's just a different notation and it still took me months. After a lot of practice I'm still really bad at it. I keep confusing some letters and just can't get used to
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Exactly. There aren't much Braille materials out there. Most books aren't printed in Braille, and most efforts that want to publish books in Braille run afoul of copyright laws.
For a blind person, there are way more SPOKEN material out there. You want an audiobook? Audible/Amazon probably has a way bigger library of audiobooks than there are Braille books several times over.
So you can learn Bra
I gotcher Braille right here... (Score:2)
Solo erotic stimulation application cumming in 3, 2, 1...
Apple researching apple (Score:2)
Found some patents.. would be nice to have though (Score:2)
Sounds obvious but would be nice to have, and Apple could likely be the best to execute it... although it would be proprietary. I can tell you I was very happily surprised by a number of assistive functions built into the latest iPhone, especially when my eyes are tired and it is hard to read tiny text the zoom magnifier widget / three finger gesture, also the screen reader is very interesting too. That said, just google the words "thin braille displays on sheets" and you will see it is not like they are th
The next version (Score:2)
The next version will have a cold generator built-in, that creates goose-bumps on your arm with Braille ads.