In 2011, we showed you a video demonstration of an app that enables visually impaired people to type on a touchscreen tablet. Over the past few years, Sohan Dharmaraja, PhD, and Adrian Lew, PhD, completely redesigned the prototype they first developed with New Mexico State University student Adam Duran at Stanford's Army High-Performance Computing Research Center. Now, their app, called iBrailler Notes, is ready for prime time.
This finished product, as Dharmajara and Lew explain in a recent story in Stanford Report, looks nothing like the original prototype that caught the media’s eye over three years ago. "Creating a prototype is relatively easy when your audience is a handful of fellow classmates. We did it almost as a whim to see if we could do it," Dharmaraja said. "But creating a real app, that potentially millions might rely upon every day, is a whole other ballgame."
Redesigning the app was no small feat because the final design had to be intuitive for users that may have little to no experience with touchscreen technology. As Dharmaraja explains, several of their test subjects had never used a tablet before:
Our testers did not know what a tablet computer or a touchscreen was, much less how to use them. We had to teach them how to use a touchscreen before they could tell us how to improve our products.
Dharmajara and Lew patterned their iBrailler Notes app after the traditional eight-keyed Perkins Brailler. What makes iBrailler Notes unique is the app enables the user to type regardless of where they position their fingers on the touchscreen—the user simply places eight to ten fingers on the touchscreen and the app automatically encircles each fingertip with a key. More from the article:
"We constantly pushed ourselves to innovate because being born with a disability shouldn't mean you get left out of today's technology revolution," Dharmaraja said. "When you see the smile of someone doing something that you and I take for granted, it's motivating."
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Lew added, "We think the time was well-spent to get it right."
Previously: Developing a touchscreen Braille writer, Tennis, anyone? New York Times examines tennis for the blind, Map of the Carina Nebula for the visually impaired, Rubik's Cube for the visually impaired, The blind can see, and The mind maps the visual world with minimal means.
Photo courtesy of Sohan Dharmaraja
