iPhone 4 for the Visually Impaired

Victor Tasaran is a visually impaired musician and tech enthusiast who also uses an iPhone 4 via a Brailliant “display”. He demonstrated this interface via a video that we found thanks to Engadget.

iPhones are a great piece of technology if you can see. The lack of a keypad makes it challenging to use for visually impaired people. But now they can use a Braille display from Brailliant. This is a device that has a refreshable Braille display which has rows of the raised braille dots that change depending on what is on the screen. It connects to an iPhone via Bluetooth. The iPhone’s screen reading technology tells the user what is there but the lack of tactile buttons would normally make it harder to use. The display takes care of that  giving the user a way to drive the iPhone interface from the display. One of the cool things is the strength of the signal. The video shows the person controlling the camera taking the phone into another room and it still working with the display.

Tasaran’s video is below. It is in low light and has some blurry parts.

Those of us who are sighted do not fully appreciate the hurdles that some people have to go through to use technology. Thankfully the new iPhone design takes this into account.

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