Tag Archives: visually impaired

These gloves help visually-impaired sports fans enjoy events even more

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Much of what we do presume almost complete access to our physical and mental faculties. Most of the products that we make and buy are designed for the majority, which mostly means physically-able people in good condition. It is far too easy to take for granted how there’s a growing number of people in our society with physical handicaps or disabilities that become disenfranchised because of these assumptions. Given our reliance on devices with screens as well as genetic defects, many people are developing visual impairments that leave them out of enjoying many things in life. That’s especially true for sports, where one really has to see to be able to enjoy the action. Fortunately, this pair of gloves sports fans with visual impairments a chance to feel part of the game once more, utilizing the wearer’s heightened sense of touch.

Designer: Jithin Raj Mambully Rajan

The human mind and body are truly remarkable in how they compensate for lost senses or limbs, and that can be seen most especially among visually-impaired people, particularly the blind. They may not have Daredevil-like super hearing, but their fingers almost become their second eyes. Those well-versed in Braille can sometimes even read faster than those who have perfect eyesight. Unfortunately, that ability is wasted in sports events where visually-impaired people have to rely on commentators or friends for descriptions of what’s happening, something that’s not trivial to do, especially with fast-paced matches.

SENS is a wearable concept that takes advantage of the key strengths of blind or visually-impaired people when it comes to mapping the sense of touch to something totally unrelated. In a nutshell, the gloves contain three vibration motors, each that make vibration patterns on the wearer’s palms, one of the most sensitive parts of the human hand. There is also a box with buttons on the back of the hand with Braille dots used for controlling the gloves.

The idea is for the gloves’ motors to generate a unique vibration pattern that could be mapped to a specific action during a sports event, which was tennis, for the purposes of testing SENS. A fault would have a different pattern from a net hit, and a score on one side would be different from the opponent’s. Memorizing which patterns correspond to which moments does have a learning curve, but it is one that visually-impaired people might already be familiar with, allowing them to easily acclimate to other sports.

This inclusive invention does require other systems to be in place, like a sort of broadcasting system that wearers can connect to in order to receive notifications of those events. It might be easy for games like tennis, where ball-tracking technologies are already in use, but other sports events will require some more work. It’s still a better, more efficient, and more fulfilling alternative compared to hearing about each and every moment from someone else’s point of view.

The post These gloves help visually-impaired sports fans enjoy events even more first appeared on Yanko Design.

Textured buttons help the visually impaired understand what colored clothes they’re wearing

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Just because you have a visual impairment doesn’t mean you can’t look good! These textured buttons allow the wearers to understand the colors of their clothes simply by touching them. With a little practice and guidance, they can then create color palettes and combinations that allow them to look good and highlight their fashion-forward personality!

Dubbed the HUEPIN, these uniquely designed buttons help the wearer understand what color clothes they’re wearing. All they really have to do is attach/sew the right buttons to the clothes once they’ve been bought. Once the entire wardrobe’s cataloged and color-coordinated, wearers can easily ‘feel colors’ to help them choose their outfits efficiently and tastefully. The HUEPINs come with specific shapes to indicate colors, and have wavy textures to help the wearer understand how bright or faded the color is. Wearers can then create pairings of contrasting colors, monochromes, triads, or a wide variety of other styles. With a little practice and help, visually-impaired wearers can easily dress their best despite their impairments! Rather wonderful, isn’t it??

The HUEPIN is a winner of the iF Design Talent Award for the year 2022.

Designers: Ang Yong Jun, Huang YuChen, Lai LiWen, Chu Pin Yan

The post Textured buttons help the visually impaired understand what colored clothes they’re wearing first appeared on Yanko Design.

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

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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.

The post Electric Guitar with Braille fretboard helps the visually impaired master a new instrument first appeared on Yanko Design.

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

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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.

The post Dot Pad tablet lets visually impaired people see pictures with their fingertips first appeared on Yanko Design.

The ViXion is a mixed-reality headset designed specifically for people with low-vision and night-blindness

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Partnering with Japan-based startup ViXion, Nendo has unveiled an eponymously named mixed-reality headset that’s designed specifically for people with reduced visibility. ViXion is a sleek headset that helps the legally blind (or people suffering from night blindness) see around them. The headset comes with a camera that captures the world ahead of the wearer, while an internal processor increases the visibility of the footage by amping up the brightness and the contrast, and projects the images onto the wearer’s eyes, allowing them to see better.

Fundamentally doing exactly the opposite of what sunglasses do, the ViXion is a headset that aids people with low vision, low peripheral vision, or night blindness, by brightening what’s ahead of them. The headset is characterized by a slim visor with a fisheye camera at the center, capturing footage across a wide periphery. The footage is processed to increase its visibility and then projected onto a semitransparent mirror display in front, for the viewer to clearly see. The wearer can also switch between black and white vision, black and white inversion, and high-contrast colors to match their visual needs.

Designer: Nendo

A Honda-incubated startup designed this genius in-shoe GPS navigation system that can guide the visually impaired

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Designed to integrate right into the wearer’s shoe, the Ashirase uses a series of haptic ‘tickles’ to help guide the visually impaired as they walk, providing a much more intuitive and effective alternative to using a smartphone.

The Ashirase has a rather heartbreaking backstory. Honda EV-engineer Wataru Chino began working on the concept following the death of a slightly visually impaired relative under circumstances he deemed avoidable. Determined to come up with a much more effective solution to help the blind navigate roads freely and safely, Chino saw no alternative but to craft together a design solution. Honda even helped incubate the design and build the startup through its new-business incubation initiative, IGNITION.

Armed with one less sense, visually impaired pedestrians find it incredibly difficult to navigate to unknown destinations. With their limited senses occupied in concentrating on directions, they can often forget to pay attention to their surroundings or the roads, putting them in danger. The inverse is problematic too, because when they pay more attention to their immediate surroundings, they could in the process forget to follow the directions correctly and get lost. Chino’s solution helps the impaired concentrate on the road while also being able to intuitively receive directions in a less-distracting way. The wearable sits sandwiched between the foot and the wearer’s sneaker. This frees up the user’s hand to hold onto their walking cane (as opposed to their smartphone), and allows them to use their ears to sense their surroundings (instead of listening to audio directions).

The name Ashirase comes from the Japanese word ‘oshirase’, for notice/notification, as the in-shoe wearable helps notify the wearer while they walk, effectively guiding them through a series of vibrations. The in-shoe wearable comes in two parts – a silicone band that wraps around the foot, and an electronic ‘compass’ that provides the haptic feedback. Wearables on each foot help guide the user in any direction, guiding the wearer to their end-destination that’s fed into Ashirase’s smartphone app (which also decides the most optimal path for the wearer to take). The app currently runs on the Google Maps API, which provides a few limitations like needing the internet to work, and not being able to provide effective navigation indoors, although the company is already working on overcoming those drawbacks.

Chino’s startup plans on releasing a beta version of the Ashirase system in Japan in October or November of this year, where users will be provided with free versions of the wearable and the app for testing purposes. Following the public beta, Ashirase is gunning for a commercial-ready product by October 2022, with a subscription-based payment system that should cost somewhere between $18 to $27 (or 2000-3000 Yen).

Designer: Ashirase LLC (Wataru Chino)

Award-winning ‘Inclusive Kettle’ allows the disabled and impaired to easily brew tea

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It’s difficult to shake the fact that products that have existed for centuries can sometimes be prime examples of non-inclusive design. Stairs are a notorious example – they’ve existed for centuries, but are an accessibility nightmare for people in wheelchairs. The humble kettle is yet another specimen… It’s been around for practically 5000 years, and is a visual icon with its short stout body, handle on one end, and spout on the other. However, ask any disabled or visually impaired person, or someone with reduced strength or dexterity and they’ll tell you how cumbersome the product’s design can be. The handle on one end means you need a fair amount of wrist strength to hold a kettle upright without it tipping over, and pouring the hot liquid into a small cup can be very challenging for people with physical or visual impairments. Nick Fitzpatrick’s ‘Inclusivitea’ hopes to change that.

A winner of the Lakeland Design Award, the Inclusivitea reimagines the quintessential kettle shape, allowing it to be easily carried and used with little effort. Styled almost like a pour-over coffee maker with handles on either side, the kettle comes with its own stand that lets you brew and then directly dispense tea into your container.

The Inclusivitea kettle highlights the two biggest problem areas when it comes to using a kettle – the filling and the pouring. The redesigned kettle comes with two handlebar-shaped arms that let you easily carry it to fill it up with water. Dock it in the stand and plug the kettle into a power outlet and it begins brewing your tea. Once your tea’s ready, simply put the cup in its dedicated zone right under the kettle and press the main button that both filters the tea and dispenses it right into the cup. The dispensing stops once you release the button, completely eliminating any chances of over-filling your cup and/or spilling tea all over the place.

Each Inclusivitea tea-set comes with the kettle and stand, but also with an assortment of containers housing everything from sugar cubes to tea bags, spices, and even a small dairy creamer jug. The easy-to-hold kettle is also accompanied by a tiny cup with an extended rim instead of a handle. Made so you can grip it by its rim comfortably (rather than with your finger through a small handle), the cup even has a small cutout in the extended rim from which to sip through.

Designer: Nick Fitzpatrick

Facebook improves AI photo descriptions for the visually impaired

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Facebook has long been using AI to describe photos for the visually impaired, but it’s stepping up its efforts in 2021. The social media giant has detailed a new version of automatic alternative text (AAT) that promises much more information.Instead...

This smart walking-stick uses real-time image-recognition to help the visually impaired ‘see’

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The Sense Five may look like a regular walking stick, but it’s to walking stick what the smartwatch is to mechanical timepieces. With smart sensors integrated into its handle, the Sense Five has its way of communicating with its user, allowing them to be aware of what’s around them. It all starts with the way the Sense Five is shaped. Its unique ‘7’ shaped format comes with a reason, helping the visually impaired easily navigate their surroundings. The stick’s angled design allows its user to instinctively hold it the right way. The handle is held horizontally, and the stick naturally leans forward, allowing the user to tap their surroundings as they navigate through spaces. A camera on the front actively captures images, recognizing objects and obstacles, while a simple switch allows you to toggle a torch to use the stick at night. When the camera identifies something worth alerting the user about, it communicates with the user through the handle.

The handle has to be by far one of my favorite details. It’s elegant, slim, and comes with a unique dynamic surface that ‘flares up’ on command, with an almost animal-like instinct. When the camera notices an obstacle near the user, the handle’s 3D surface comes to life, alerting the user. The tactile response is incredibly easy to identify (especially given that the user’s palms are perpetually in contact with the handle), and is much more effective than an audio cue, which could get missed in a noisy environment or could be disturbing in a quiet one. The way the handle communicates with the user is incredibly stealthy, effective, and almost reptilian. The handle, through its dynamic skin, can even communicate a low-battery status to the user, prompting them to charge the Sense Five via a standard USB-C port on the back.

However, the Sense Five isn’t just a walking stick for its owner. It can help communicate the user’s presence to others around them. The torchlight on the front is accompanied by a red taillight on the back that helps people spot the stick and user in low-light settings. Incredibly effective at night (especially when you need to cross the road), the torch and taillight are yet another example of features that go above and beyond to keep the visually impaired user safe and sound as they navigate through life.

Designer: Werteloberfell