Electronic 3D book concept helps visually impaired kids feel the magic of fairy tales

Reading is already a difficult task for people with visual impairments, but it’s especially challenging when it comes to material that involves a lot of visual elements. Adults might have not much of a problem visualizing those words in their minds, but children who are still developing their mental libraries will probably have a harder time. Fairy tales and fictional books with fantasy elements are examples of these highly visual materials, and simply hearing the narration or feeling the words through Braille feels rather insufficient to capture the emotions and magic of the stories. This electronic book concept tries to offer an equally magical experience that makes the objects and scenes pop out from the book, almost literally.

Designers: Subin Kim, Yujeong Shin, Seungyeon Lee

It’s pretty amazing how blind and visually impaired people can read a book while sliding their hands across seemingly random dots, almost like magic. But the text on a page doesn’t exactly show the images associated with the words, relying on your imagination to conjure up those associations mentally. Of course, that comes almost like second nature for those with normal eyesight, but the visually impaired, especially younger ones, need a bigger boost to help match words with shapes and objects.

bbook is a concept for an electronic 3D book that provides all the necessary tools for a child with visual impairments to not only make sense of but also enjoy such fantastical books. It has an audio component that reads the book out loud, with large tactile buttons that let the reader skip forward or backward as desired. There’s also a dynamic Braille “page” where dots rise and sink as the words change.

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The most interesting part of the book, however, is the fabric-like material on the opposite page. This soft material would also rise to create bumps but not as words in Braille but as actual three-dimensional objects related to the story being told. It could be Snow White’s apple, Cinderella’s glass slipper, or the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood. In addition to the educational value of this feature, it also helps make the story feel even more magical.

Every part of the 3D book was designed so that a visually impaired individual could use it without assistance. Even the charging indicators are elevating dots rather than LEDs so they can feel how much more time it needs. bbook also has a rather interesting feature where each individual story is inserted into the device like a USB stick, making each tale a memorable and magical experience.

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This discreet device helps blind people read voice memos with their fingertips

There is a veritable wealth of technology available at our fingertips, from smartphones to hands-free voice assistants to AI that can create convincing (or deceptive) works of art. Amazing as they might be, not everyone is able to utilize these technologies that make human life more convenient, especially when it comes to things that you need to see to be able to use. Visually impaired people are among those disenfranchised by many of these common technologies and devices, and they actually make up a large part of today’s population. Even something as simple as taking notes for recalling later can be a frustrating process despite modern technology, but this simple-looking device concept attempts to put those technologies to work in a very inconspicuous way.

Designer: Seunghyun Ko

We do have quite a few devices and services today that don’t require vision to use. Voice-controlled smart assistants, for example, give feedback via voice as well and offer auditory cues instead of notifications on screens. Of course, they can also take voice notes for yourself that you can ask them to play at a later time. Unfortunately, that kind of interaction isn’t always possible, especially in public places where you might not want other to hear that memo to yourself, or it might not be possible to hear the voice note in the middle of a noisy environment.

TEXT.ure offers a solution that is both simple yet ingenious, combining several existing technologies into a single design that could significantly improve the quality of life of visually-impaired people. In a nutshell, the user records a voice memo onto the device, and it uses speech recognition and perhaps a pinch of AI to translate that memo into Braille. Inside the device is a grid of dots that can be raised or lowered to form the corresponding Braille characters so that the user can read the note later in private.

The idea might sound simple but the execution is quite elegant. TEXT.ure comes as a square device with rounded corners and smooth surfaces. It opens up into two parts, revealing the Braille mechanism inside. The shape is reminiscent of the general form of notepads, or at least how blind people might perceive it through their fingertips.

A great deal of attention was poured into the texture and tactile experience of the device, especially since visually-impaired people rely heavily on their sense of touch. The use of plastic, though questionable, is meant to convey feelings of lightness and softness, while the silicone carrying strap makes gives one an assurance of flexibility and durability. The fabric that covers the hinge connect the two halves also give a warm sensation. The few physical controls that the device has are all located at the edges and are clearly marked so that they can be easily distinguished and manipulated with a single touch.

TEXT.ure might sound and look like a simple device, but its minimalism belies the power that it gives to people who might feel powerless even with today’s technologies. Being able to quickly dictate a note to oneself and be able to read it later with privacy isn’t something that is easily available to visually-impaired people. It’s unfortunate that such devices still exist only in the realm of concepts, but hopefully designers and engineers will be able to come together and build something like this soon.

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Electric Guitar with Braille fretboard helps the visually impaired master a new instrument

While simply color-coordinating or backlighting parts of an instrument may work for regular novices, it doesn’t translate to visually impaired users. Vitar hopes to solve that by covering its entire fretboard with Braille keys that can help blind and vision-impaired people navigate their way around a guitar. Vitar, however, isn’t a traditional electric guitar either – it’s a MIDI instrument styled like a guitar, which also unlocks an entire world of potential with electronic music.

If the Vitar looks a little odd at first, it’s because it isn’t your average Spanish guitar. Designed to electronically send signals to a software (technically known as a Digital Audio Workstation), the Vitar comes with keys that you press with your left hand, indicating the notes you want the guitar to play. However, Vitar doesn’t quite stop right there. Each key located in the guitar’s fretboard comes with a Braille letter embossed on it, allowing even the visually impaired to work their way around the instrument. It’s a classic example of a tiny design detail that radically improves the product’s experience for all its users.

Designers: Eojin Roh, Seonjin Baek, Yujeong Shin

The fascinating part about the Vitar is its unconventional design. The way it was made has nothing to do with acoustics, but rather has everything to do with being intuitive and minimizing the learning curve. The Vitar’s body has an odd asymmetric shape that helps users instantly understand which way it’s supposed to be held (one could argue that it isn’t ambidextrous, although that might come across as pedantic). Strings sit in a recessed chamber on the main body, so the hand or guitar pick knows when to stop (while also giving you a place to conveniently rest your fingers). Guidelines across the main body help the hand navigate around the guitar in an instant, so you spend more time jamming and less time figuring out if you’re holding the instrument right.

Buttons on the base of the electric guitar let you control its built-in speaker/amplifier.

Vitar’s most impressive feat, however, remains its Braille keys. One of the most difficult parts of the guitar learning experience is figuring out which fret triggers which note. Sure, a talented guitar can easily pick this up by ear and with repeated practice, but for a novice, it requires a lot of counting down the frets, examining the corresponding string, etc. Just by simply molding Braille letters onto the individual keys, the Vitar makes the process as easy as pressing a button… quite literally.

While the Vitar is targeted towards visually impaired students, even most regular users can benefit from the sheer muscle memory of their fingertips knowing which key is located where, and what button triggers what note. If it helps us regular folk pick up a bit of braille in the process too, that’s an overall win in my book!

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen uniquely designed and shaped electric guitars. Earlier this year, Ezra Feldman unveiled an unconventional ‘curved’ electric guitar that was designed to offer a much more ergonomic and strain-free experince.

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This wearable tape-dispenser can help correct Braille typos and misprints

Aptly titled the Braille Correction Device, this hand-worn contraption handles a lesser-considered problem that not many of us think about. Not only is publishing in Braille much more difficult than regular printing, but it’s also rather uncommon. So imagine when you find a publication you’re looking for, but it’s got typos and errors in the print! Correcting Braille misprints is even more of a challenge, although that’s where this nifty little piece of stationery comes in. Designed to work sort of like correction liquid works on a printed text typo, the Braille Correction Device overlays the right character over the wrong one, fixing any errors in print or physical damage to text. It’s simple, intuitive, and is designed to be an entirely analog device.

Designers: Tian-Yi Chen, Chao-Jie Hu, Yi-Xuan Li & Xue-Nan Zheng

Given that Braille is a monospaced language, using the Braille Correction Device is rather easy when it comes to swapping out old characters with new ones. Just like correction fluid helps practically fix small errors (not entire sentences or paragraphs), the Braille Correction Device works on simple, easy-to-fix mistakes.

A winner of the Golden Pin Design Award, the Braille Correction Device is easy to operate. It fits on your right finger and comes with a roll of Braille tape pre-fed into it. Once you’ve located the error, use the dot-puncher to input the right spelling into the tape fed inside the Braille Correction Device. Place your right index finger on the error and hit the button on the side to begin dispensing the tape. Move your finger downward to apply the tape, and hit the button on top of the device to cut the tape once it’s applied over the wrong character.

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The Dot Watch is the first Braille smartwatch in the world

Braille Smartwatch Dot Watch Function

Braille is one of the most important writing systems in the world today. The centuries-old system is still very much being used these days. Despite the advent of technology, the tactile writing system for the visually impaired is still deemed a significant language.

Braille is not exactly a language but it’s more of a code. Nevertheless, this system remains useful since there are people who have poor or no vision at all. There are plenty of concept product designs introduced in recent years, but not many have been transformed into reality.

Designer: YeongKyu Yoo (cloudandco design studio)

The Dot Watch

The latest we discovered is the Braille Smartwatch for Visually Impaired. It’s a smartwatch that preserves the beauty of Braille. It is said to be the first moving braille smartwatch in the world designed for the visually impaired. The smartwatch comes with a powerful and cohesive look. It has a unique display with built-in four cells where the “interaction” happens. In addition, it has touch sensors on both sides that respond to gestures.

Braille Dot Watch

The concept is a response to the fact that there are many vision-impaired communities today, and there aren’t many tools available. About 95% of the blind give up learning braille because resources are expensive or because they think braille technology is already outdated.

The Braille Smartwatch, called the Dot Watch, is for the forgotten. It is perhaps the easiest and most accessible device a visually-impaired person can use. It really is a smart watch in the sense it allows people to communicate.

Braille Smartwatch Dot Watch Where to Buy

The concept is actually from a few years ago. In fact, it has already received a few awards and recognitions. It’s something we’ve wanted to see become a reality. It is an actual product now that can balance beauty and functionality.

The Dot Watch weighs only 29 grams but is packed with potential. It uses the smallest Braille cell technology in the world, developed b Dot Inc. It connects to a smartphone via Bluetooth so you can be notified of who is calling. When you receive a text on the phone, the message is translated to Braille and is communicated to the Dot Watch for you to “read”. The touch controls on the watch face are intuitive, and the Auto-Scroll is customizable. Messages can be saved so you can check on them later.

Braille Smartwatch Dot Watch Images

The Dot Watch is priced at $299 and each unit comes with three additional ProSkins, one Dot Watch Magnetic Charger, and a one-year warranty card. We believe his DOT WATCH with Braille is a perfect example of a great idea coming to life. You can purchase directly from HERE.

Braille Smartwatch Dot Watch Price

Braille Smartwatch Dot Watch Features

Braille Smartwatch Dot Watch Images

Braille Smartwatch Dot Watch Technology

Braille Smartwatch Dot Watch Details

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Dot Pad tablet lets visually impaired people see pictures with their fingertips

Thanks to today’s technologies and bright minds, visually impaired people no longer have to settle for voice-overs and text to enjoy the magic of pictures.

Modern life has seemingly settled around digital artifacts, from files to videos to photos. While there are devices and software that help translate these pieces of content into something that could be consumed by those with vision problems, there remains one kind of content that can’t be transformed that easily. Text can easily be spoken out or be “felt” using braille, but blind and visually impaired people often have to rely on text descriptions for images, which sometimes aren’t available. With this rather innovative device, they no longer have to settle for anything less, allowing them to feel pictures the way they do text.

Designer: Dot Inc.

The human mind and body are quite amazing when it comes to adapting to physical problems. Those with vision disabilities, for example, tend to develop more heightened senses of hearing and touch. Adept braille readers can almost match the speed of those with sufficient vision, making it look like they’re magically reading off a book using their fingers. Utilizing that same incredible skill, this unique tablet literally puts images under people’s fingertips so that they can see rather than just read or hear photos, graphs, and drawings.

Braille tablets aren’t exactly new, but Dot Pad takes this idea to the next level by having a large area with 2400 dots grouped in 30×10 cells that change in real-time to mirror an image from a paired iPad or iPhone. There is also a smaller area with 20×1 cells that can be used for displaying text in braille, useful for images that come with their own captions. The idea is to let visually impaired people slide their fingers over those dots to be able to form the correct picture in their minds, rather than relying on descriptions that could be inaccurate.

The slate itself is rather unremarkable in terms of visual design. It’s a large and rather thick black rectangle with legs on its upper back to allow it to lie on a table at an angle. The two dot-grid areas are separated by chunky buttons that would allow people to identify and push the right ones without having to see them. The product is designed more for durability and reliability rather than appearances, which is quite acceptable given its intended audience.

Dot Pad is an innovative solution that opens the doors wide open for people with visual disabilities to enjoy more of the world around them. It also empowers them to be more productive in life since the pad allows them to also understand graphs and charts better. These people no longer need to feel left out or ostracized because of their impairments and can even become a source of pride when they show off their mad skills in interpreting visual data using just their fingers.

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Label Maker with a Braille input allows visually-impaired to print tactile touch-friendly labels

Here’s a design exercise that I think can really help develop your skills – take a product and see if it’s disability-proof. If it isn’t, you’ve got yourself a rather nifty design brief! Take, for instance, the label maker – a pretty useful product… as long as you can see and read. To overcome this accessibility gap, the Braille Label Maker allows you to print labels in braille that the visually impaired can touch to read. The device sports an easy-to-use, non-cluttered design language, with concave recessed buttons that let you intuitively use the label maker without looking at it. The buttons on the label maker help navigate the relatively clean interface, and the labels can either be composed on the device itself or via a smartphone app using the special visually-impaired accessibility keyboard. Once the text is ready, the label maker prints it out on a special adhesive-backed Braille-friendly paper that lets you read the label by running your fingers across. Sure, the Braille Label Maker serves a very niche audience, but it’s an important one nonetheless.

The Braille Label Maker’s most significant feature has to be its incredibly clean design. Curved surfaces make it easy and comfortable to hold, a hood on the top holds the roll of paper, and a minimal keyboard with Braille markings and concave keycaps makes it easy to type with minimal error. Even though its wonderful black and orange design is the kind that your eyes instantly fall in love with, designer Isaac Chan was clever enough to focus primarily on making something the hands will love first, and the eyes later. The label maker finally sports a connector-pin-based charging port at the bottom that presumably uses a MagSafe-style cable, making it all the better for the blind to use!

Designer: Isaac Chan

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Emojis for the blind? A type designer is meticulously translating popular emojis into Braille

While the idea of emojis was originally to promote visual texting, its drawback remains the fact that its visual nature makes it inaccessible to the vision impaired. To help overcome this barrier, type designer and PhD student at Belgium’s MAD School of Arts, Walda Verbaenen took it upon herself to redesign popular emoticons in Braille. The project, titled “Braille Emoticons” proposes the addition of 22 different symbols or emojis to the Braille alphabet, comprising everything from the various smileys to thumbs up and thumbs down, and even the heart emoji.

“People who use Braille are forced to use the letters of the alphabet to describe their emotions”, Walda mentions. “This became a starting point to design an addition to the Braille alphabet, based on our visualized emotions into emoticons, converted into the ‘dot’ language that characterizes Braille.” To ensure it doesn’t conflict with the traditional braille alphabet of a grid of 12 dots, the emoticon addition to the Braille alphabet was developed in a grid of 9 dots, fitting well with the square structure of the emoticon symbols.

Designer: Walda Verbaenen

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This sleek, accessible Braille Computer is like a MacBook for the visually impaired!

Designed to make technology accessible but also desirable, the iF Design Award-winning Braille Computer from Hangzhou DesignDo Innovation brings the sleek design language of modern consumer technology products and introduces it to special-needs design. The computer works like any standard desktop or laptop and supports regular desktop and mobile operating systems and programs like note-taking software, mail software, e-book readers, and even internet browsers. The all-in-one computer comes with a keyboard for input on the top, and a dynamic braille display at the bottom that lets users read what’s on their screen, one line at a time. Joysticks on the left and right let users navigate through their computer too, allowing them to switch between apps, open files, and even scroll across documents and pages!

The Braille Computer’s design noticeably deviates from the design DNA of other computers for the visually impaired. Designed for functionality but also made to look and ‘feel’ desirable, the computer is small, portable, sleek, and features a satin-finish metallic body that looks and feels great to the touch, combined with concave-capped keys that make typing on the Braille Computer an absolute breeze! Designed with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi built in, the computer can even connect to other peripherals, bridging the gap between consumer tech and special-needs tech!

The Braille Computer is a winner of the iF Design Award for the year 2020.

Designer: Hangzhou DesignDo Innovation