Samsung releases Braille mobile phone for blind and vision impaired

[pne]

Samsung's "Touch Messenger" mobile phone won the 2006 Industrial Design Excellence Awards (IDEA).

The phone features Braille output and has twelve input keys, arranged like two Braille cells side-by-side. It will let blind and vision-impaired users send and receive text messages without having to rely on text-to-speech "which negates the privacy and unobtrusiveness intended with this form of communication".

The phone is currently only available for the Chinese market, but I found it an interesting idea.

Comments

[tungol.livejournal.com]

Hmm.... one could imagine it being handy for sighted people too who would like to keep their messaging secret - since they would only have to feel it, which could be out of sight, rather than look at it. Of course, that's not likely to be common since not many people would be likely to bother to learn braille.

(The idea comes to mind because of Helen Keller's watch, which was originally designed for a businessman who needed to know the time during meetings when looking at his watch would be socially inappropriate.)