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Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Qualcomm and Project RAY announce eye-free smartphone for blind and visually-impaired people

Project RAY, which designs accessibility tools for blind and visually-impaired people, has announced a new mobile interface that’s designed to be used without sight. It’s been designed in partnership with the Qualcomm Wireless Reach initiative and uses a standard Android smartphone powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processor.

The new UI supports phone calls, text messaging, navigation, object recognition, social networking, remote assistance, audio-book reading and other leisure & entertainment features. It combines touch-screen controls with vibration and spoken prompts.

Boaz Zilberman, chief executive officer of Project RAY, said “The breakthrough UI defines a new language for human-device interaction that is built ground-up for eye-free operation. The user touches any position on the screen and that position becomes the starting point for selecting an audio-book, messaging or other activity. Navigation is enabled by a few simple finger movements in different directions. The phone’s built-in vibration capabilities and voice prompts provide user feedback and the UI learns to adapt its behavior based on users’ preferences and usage patterns.”

A trial project in Israel is currently testing the new RAY mobile device with 100 people.

According to the World Health Organization, 285 million people are visually impaired worldwide; 39 million are blind while 246 have low vision.

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Is Google’s new mobile phone distribution model really a big deal for the UK?

Mark Bridge writes:

“Google offers New Model for Consumers to buy a Mobile Phone”. Not my words but those of Vodafone as it announced it was the first operator to bring the new Google phone offer to Europe.

There’s a lot of talk about Google’s online ordering process for its Nexus One smartphone… or ‘superphone’ as the company described it at yesterday’s launch.

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Mark Bridge writes:

I really don’t like to complain. Honestly, I don’t. I’m an optimist. True, I can be a bit of a cynic – but that’s because I like to see things work first time.

So when I saw a headline that said “Shopping via mobile phone causes concerns for consumers”, I wasn’t surprised. Disappointed but not surprised.

And then I looked closer – and I got annoyed. Not annoyed at the companies that make mobile shopping so disappointing. No, annoyed at the organisation that published the report.

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Is mobile technology too young to predict?

Mark Bridge writes:

“Leave them alone, they’re just kids”

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