A Smartphone for the Blind Powered by Braille

For many people, smartphones evoke mental images of powerful displays and brilliant imagery, and large amounts of heavily-visual content. But for the blind, that matter is often simply unavailable to them. While there are still plenty of uses for smartphones even for those with visual impairments of some kind, the whole experience is often lost. But with a new development under way by 2011 TED Fellow Sumit Dagar, the blind and those with comparable visual impairments may have a new friend in portable devices with a smartphone that focuses on using Braille.

It's easy to wonder how a smartphone can use Braille -- after all, Braille is a series of raised bumps, designed to be felt and converted mentally into letters -- but Sumit Dagar's prototype may just have the answer. While the phone as yet has no name, what it does have is a band of what's known as Shape Memory Alloy technology, set in a grid of pins across the top of the device. With Shape Memory Alloy in place, the pins can expand and contract as needed to create a series of bumps that can take on the same shape as Braille letters, allowing said letters to be understood and interpreted by those who can read Braille.

The original design goes back fully three years, and Dagar is reportedly working with IIT Delhi on the prototype with a target release date of the end of 2013. The devices are expected to retail for $185 when ultimately made available. While Dagar himself reportedly describes the devices as the "world's first Braille smartphone," the idea is not so new. A Braille keyboard for smartphones, for example, has been available for around a year now. But incorporating the Braille directly into the smartphone is a different matter.

Regardless of what, if anything, actually came first, the idea of bringing smartphones to the visually impaired is definitely a good idea. Giving those with disabilities better access to communications technology allows those individuals to take advantage of the advances that many of us take for granted every day. Granted, there are plenty of tools that even those with visual impairments can bring to bear in terms of smartphones -- apps like SayText and Siri are two of the biggest that allow for a lot of functionality to emerge just with voice work -- but for even the most basic things like SMS messaging, there's still quite a bit to be desired.

It's a matter of not so much what came first, but rather that it even exists in the first place. It's clear that many users will be happy to have a device that can accommodate their specific needs, and provide them with the kind of communications tools that can provide easy access to other people quickly, effectively, and from just about anywhere.