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Friday, 28 June 2013

A better smart phone experience for visually impaired !!!!!


Expected design ( Image:kriyate.org)
         In this world of comfort loving people, gadgets play a crucial role in easing our tasks. We have a plethora of gadgets available like music machines,tablets,mobile phones and many more, which assists us in various ways. Since the past decade users started rating their gadgets based on the simplicity in the interface. In this span of a decade the conventional screens were completely substituted by the touch screen. Here arises a question. "Does these fancy touch screens provide same sort of user experience for the wide variety of users in the market?" The answer is obviously no. In this smart phone era we are utilizing our mobile phone in many ways for a wide variety of tasks with a matter of a touch. But we have to keep in mind that with these kind of touch screens and smart phone experience, we are actually complicating the mobile phone experience for some kind of users who are suffering from bad sight because it is hard to use a touch screen than a conventional keypad for visually impaired (Even we can hit an SMS without having a glance at the keypad but replicating the same task with a touch screen is practically impossible). Around 285 million suffer with the problem of bad eye sight world wide and one-fifth of that total value live in India. In order to overcome this barrier lot of proposals and utilities were introduced to provide a better experience for people with bad sight but they were not so successful due to several practical problems.
Existing methods:-
          Since a long time we have been depending on the voice based applications to provide better smartphone experience for blind.These applications convert the text content on the device screen into speech and then the speech is made audible for the blind user so that he/she can act accordingly. In the same way to send a message or call using the mobile phone the user has to instruct the device and then the software converts his voice commands into physical actions on the screen. This approach has many practical difficulties which include diversity in the accents used by different users and it is practically impossible to design a software for each and every accent. So these applications failed to address the problem in a holistic manner. Even there were many software that create variety of beeps and vibrations signalling different tasks but these failed to attract the visually impaired due to above said practical bottlenecks. So the need of the hour is an universal solution for this problem which can act pretty much the same way in all parts of the world.
Braille stands out to be the ultimate solution:- 
                In order to address this problem in a holistic manner, we have to investigate the similarities that the visually impaired in different geographical locations have so that the solution can be weaved based on that common factor. This approach eliminates the problem of different dialects used in different parts of the world and the common factor for all the blind in the world is Braille. It is with the help of Braille that all the blinds in the world grow up and learn different things even the basic alphabet. An innovator Sumit Dagar of India thought in the same direction and proposed an idea of designing a smartphone based on braille so that it can be used by people from any part of the world alike. This idea grabbed so much of attention and even fetched a whooping $53,000 through Rolex Award enterprise for the development of final design. Kriyate a Sumit Dagar's start up is now ready with a basic prototype and it was tested on several blind. The feedback from the visually impaired after using this product was optimistic and their ease will improve greatly once their brain gets adjusted to it.
How it works?? 
            Basically Braille script can be read by the blind with the impressions felt by their fingers and this smart phone also works pretty much the same way.It consists a wide screen like area which consists of a repressible display. Through out the display there will be pin like structures that move up and down based on the data to be translated. So when the user gets an SMS to his braille smartphone the original text is converted to Braille (instead of voice in earlier applications for blind) and when the user keeps his fingers on the screen the pin like structures move up and down as per the translated text in SMS so that the user can feel the actual text in the SMS (this process is similar to reading a book with content in Braille). Thus the user can get the original information in the SMS. Similar method can be adopted for accessing content on internet. In order to instruct the phone, exactly opposite procedure to the above said process is followed. There is also a facility of variety of beeps and vibrations for different functions which can be used  to enhance the experience further. IIT-Delhi, LV Prasad eye institute and CIIE of IIM-A collaborated with Sumit's start up to bring out an efficient design. This gadget may tentatively hit the market next year and the estimated cost of the basic model will be around 10,000 INR. Lets hope this device which was made solely out of Indian technology can bring light into the lives of millions around the world. 
   Note: Use of the word blind was made to express the state and is not intended to degrade the visually impaired.
                                                                    Source: IEEE Spectrum

4 comments:

  1. what is a "biological transistor" ? in what applications it is use full?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Biological transistor or simply a "transcriptor" is a revolutionary concept introduced by Stanford researchers that created ripples in the field of genetic engineering. We all know that DNA is a molecule that holds all our genetic information. DNA exists in a double helical structure and the two strands of DNA are combined by the bonds formed by G,A,T,C (nucleobase). Every disease with which you suffer now or expected in future can be known in advance by the "DNA sequencing". The behavior of a cell can be estimated by controlling the process called "Transcription" which is carried out by another molecule called RNA. This RNA is produced by an enzyme called "RNA Polymerase(RNAP)". So, if we can control the flow of RNA Polymerase on the strands of DNA we can control the process of transcription and there by can control the behavior of a cell. This is the basic idea in genetic computing. So to carry out such process the so called transcriptor or biological transistor was designed. It is a three terminal device like a transistor and the main difference is that instead of semiconductor devices it is made up of some specialized enzymes to control the flow of RNAP. It can also amplify the input signal just like the transistor.Amplification in the sense for a slight change in the input(enzyme activity)can leads to large change in the output. The main application of these transcriptors is in the biological computing. Just like the transistor, transcriptor is the heart and basic component of genetic or biological computers.I will explain the purpose of this device with an example. If there is a cancerous cell present in the body then the biological transistor can detect it with the changes in the RNAP and process the input and then the output can activate an enzyme which destruct that cancerous cell.HOpe you understand it.If not feel free to ask.

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  2. Is there a C++ editor online for windows 8??

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi friend,
      Yes the editor is available..
      Try one among the two links..
      prefer:- 1) http://download.cnet.com/Turbo-C-for-Windows-8-and-7/3000-2212_4-75786077.html

      It will download the installer first and then the editor will be downloaded..

      2) If the above editor didn't work then try this
      http://www.windows8downloads.com/win8-dev-c--wdoxnrth/

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