Our vision is something we often take for granted and we have already seen how one team from Imagine Cup is using the Kinect and Bing Maps to overcome blindness but what about reading? We are all familiar with braille but allowing visually impaired individuals to use smartphones, so far, has been a challenging experience
When you think about a flat touchscreen device, bringing braille to that experience seems like it would disrupt the device and require and adtitional surface or utility to make it possible. A creative group of individuals has figured out how to side-step this problem by using vibration feedback to allow those who are blind, to read, using a Windows Phone.
The concept can been seen in the video above and shows how once again, thinking outside the box, we can expand the horizons of those around us who may have a disability that limits their use of technology.
The team that created this applicaiton is out of Poland and they plan to offer this application for free on Windows Phone. The application can be ported to other platforms but for now, it resides on Windows Phone. To take it even further, the team has plans to scale out the technology as by using vibration feedback, it would be possible to tweak Windows Phone's OS to incorporate this feedback and allow visually impaired individuals to use a smartphone to its fullest capability.
Interested in Imagine Cup? Want to learn more or even register your team for the 2013 challenges? Head on over to Imagine Cup's website to stay updated on all the events for the 2013 competition.
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