Google Eyes-Free Shell

For those that haven't heard, the folks at Google's Accessibility group have released an eyes-free shell for Android. Android is the open source operating system that powers Google's G1 phone as well as several upcoming mobile devices.



I recently had a chance to test the Google Eyes-Free Shell, which I found to be both intuitive and well thought out.

The shell is more than just an eyes-free dialer. It announces several other bits of information that are important to visually impaired users including: date and time, device state (battery level, signal strength, etc.), and GPS location.

The release of the eyes-free shell represents a lot of hard work by TV Raman, Charles Chen, and many others involved in the project. For more information, checkout their press release or the YouTube channel.

Stanford Cool Product Expo

http://coolproductexpo.stanford.edu/

April 8th, 12pm-6pm. The event is free and open to the public. The show highlights emerging technologies. It usually draws quite a crowd (1300+ last year).

The Stanford show in the heart of Silicon Valley proved to be a great place for TacDial's public debut. For those interested in the software, feel free to drop by our booth and try it out yourself.

Blog Launch

Tactile Innovations announces the development of TacDial, an eyes free dialing program for the iPhone. TacDial allows the user to do basic dialing on the iPhone without looking at the screen.

Eyes free dialing is useful in environments where it is inconvenient or undesireable to redirect one's eyes to the screen, in order to use the iPhone's on-screen keyboard. One particularly relevent situation includes dialing while driving.

By relying on auditory and vibration feedback rather than visual feedback, TacDial also makes the iPhone more accessible to visually impaired users.

TacDial works by replacing absolute button locations with a gesture based input method. The gesture based dialing method is based on the standard 12 cell telephone keypad.

The user can touch anywhere on the iPhone screen. Wherever the user touches the screen, an image of the keypad appears, with the "5" centered at the user's finger location.

Dialing any digit is a touch-drag-and-release motion. Dialing a "1" is as simple as touching anywhere on the screen and dragging up and left before releasing. Similarly, one dials a "6" by touching anywhere, dragging one's finger to the right before releasing.

Each digit is confirmed audibly with a voiced number (i.e. the iPhone says "Seven" when dialing the digit "7"). Tick sounds indicate having moved from one cell of the pad to another.

Backspacing is accomplished by touching and dragging all the way off the screen to the left. Once satisfied with the number, dialing is accomplished by touching and dragging one's finger off the screen to the right.

The first version of TacDial will not include saving to or dialing from the users contacts. This feature is slated for future releases of the software. Stay tuned for release dates, screen shots, pricing, and videos.