A smartwatch for vision impaired, advertised a website without a lot of accessibility provisions (not to mention the scrolljacking and "are you sure you want to leave" onexit hooks).
Sadly, I came to say this too. Looks more like a kickstarter gauging interest (with the crappy google form for "pre order") than an actual existing product.
Hi, this is Dennis Jung from Dot Incorporation
At the current moment, we are revamping our website https://dotincorp.com/ - our goal is to make all information available in both text and audio forms and leave no one behind.
We would like to apologize for any inconvenience. Meanwhile, you can visit our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/dotsmartbraillewatch to find out about our latest updates and news.
Thank you.
This is what I was thinking the whole time... The "Preorder" button scrolls you to a spot on the page where there is no easy information about preordering. This website is really poorly designed..
Please don't share sites like this. This is a common theme. People advertise "revolutionary products" for blind people, whithout actually explaining what kind of microactuators they use. I am 99% sure this is a fake non-invention that does not exist.
They include interviews with blind people who've tried it.
They say that it's smaller, lighter, and cheaper because they use a new type of actuator that isn't "on a ceramic substrate".
The company plans to ship its first 150,000 devices by the end of the year for £300; the dot mini is an educational braille reader planned for sale for £650.
> Modern actuators are piezo-electric. I have no idea what "ceramic substrate"
The piezo crystals are the ceramic. This new device claims not to use piezo crystals, and that's why it's smaller.
There's a possibility it's using electroactive polymers in a closed bubble together with latches. This would be much cheaper than piezo systems, and also smaller.
N. Di Spigna, P. Chakraborti, D. Winick, P. Yang, T. Ghosh and P. Franzon, “The Integration of Novel EAPBased Braille Cells for Use in a Refreshable Tactile Display,” Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Electroactive Polymer Actuators and Devices, San Diego, March 2010, p. 9.
In the video on the linked page they show several blind people using the watch, they seem genuinely surprised at the information they read from its face. Do you suspect this to be faked?
Yes, I believe it is faked. I worked in the braille community for years and micro-actuators that actually work are like a holy grail. If they had one that actually worked, they would be plastering their site with descriptions of their new world changing mirco-actuation mechanism. They don't show a real video of it actuating. It just makes no sense. Its like if you invented fusion power and spent the entire time showing videos of smiling kids next to dish washers, and never even tried to explain the breakthrough for the containment material.
For those who think that it shouldn't be that hard: "actually works" means that you can make an actuator in relatively low quantities that
- is smal, ideally the distance between Braille dots or about (distance within a character is smaller than that between dots in different characters) 2.5 mm by 2.5 mm, with a height of less than 2cm or so,
- can lift a dot by about 1mm (from definitely not above the surface to 0.9mm above it),
- withstands a force of about .3N (30 grams),
- can be switched while the user exerts that 30 gram force on it,
- will work for 10^6 actuations,
- works reliably in the presence of dirt, grease and human sweat,
- doesn't require enormous amounts of power (piezo-electric Braille cells only need power when switching),
- is safe when users (almost) touch them with their bare fingers (piezo-electric cells use 200V or so to switch, but that is at a few cm from the Braille pins),
- can be produced for a few dollars (you need 8 for a Braille cell or 160 for a 20-character display, so it adds up). If your goal is to make a full page (say 8000 pins) $1 each already is too much.
You also wil like want to switch 500 of these in 0.1s or so.
Especially if you forget about the desired reliability and/or limit the force or the travel, the problem gets a lot easier.
I think the videos that these guys posted are real, but wonder how long this device will keep working.
The video helps, since the watch face shown on the web page has only 2.5 braille characters to each side of the divider line. I was wondering how that could possibly work, but in the video, there are 18 dots, or three full characters, to each side of the line.
Its like how theranos speaches were all about how world changing it was, and didn't include a description of what trick they used to make the leap in inovation.
Yeah, they are really common. While I was working in braille, my grandparents would send me a new "miracle invention" for blind people every week. Fucking disgusting. I don't even understand what these companies, and sometimes even seemingly non-profit organizations get out of this. But it also seems that it is a bug in the psyche of the tech industry that we share these stories and upvote them. We are obsessed with the idea that technology is changing the world and creating a utopia. The fact that we haven't managed to come up with a new micro-actuator for braille displays in 40 years doesn't bode very well for that theory [1].
To some extent, the current technology, which is called a piezoelectric display is like a lithium ion battery. Its not like we don't have other battery technologies, it is just that lithium is enough better than the others, that no other can take hold. The piezo displays are almost silent, last a LONG time (20 years), and take very little power. They are, however, slow and bulky and not practical for mobile applications. The mechanism is so large, you cannot create a multi-row display. (edit: they are also rediculously expensive!)
There have been multirow displays using solenoid actuators. These were hand made by grad students and weighed a ton. They used a huge amount of power and got jammed easilly. Other than that, there are pneumatic displays with huge potential, but are also bulky. There are static electric displays that have life expectancy issues, and a few other technologies, like using memory springs, that tend to have speed issues. Then there are a huge number of mechanical "conveyor belt displays" which are too noisy to use in a classroom or office.
But all of the displays you see being publisized are not the ones that I am talking about. Displays like the one you linked to are totally 100% FAKE!!!
Tiny correction: you _can_ create a multiline display. Two-line devices have been sold, and full-page ones demonstrated. However, it isn't practical or affordable.
Impractical: you can stack piezo-electric Braille cells, but your device will be about half an inch high per line of text. Weight also goes up, of course.
Not affordable: ballpark, a _cheap_ piezoelectric Braille cell costs at least $25 per character (http://www.aph.org/orbit-reader-20/ uses a different technology, but is considered cheap at $500 for 20 characters). That's $3.50 per 'bit'. At that price, two 80-character lines would cost you $4000 (In reality, that probably buys you _one_ 80-character line)
I remember when this was first announced a few years ago - great to see its progress. It's amazing that visual display tech has advanced so far in 100 years that one can't see the pixels, yet haptic display tech is so primitive that the best displays are only capable of dozens of pixels. It goes to show that motivation and money are what drive tech innovation, not fundamental physical constraints.
I somehow believe that the evolutionary pressure towards sight is so large (i.e. the benefit of sight is so great) that we're essentially guaranteed any sentient biological extraterrestrial will have it.
Is that really true? There are many photo luminescent creatures there, so light must be important to them. I'm thinking they appear to be blind to us in normal daylight, perhaps because their sensitivity is to extremely low levels of light. In their environment, they can see perfectly well?
Deep ocean may be an unusual case because species and individuals can relatively easily move between different layers. Unlike caves.
But marine creatures have many different adaptations. Cetaceans IIRC have relatively good visual acuity, but are monochromants. Lots of animals lose color vision. Some animals develop huge eyes to pick up tiny bits of light; some have a bioluminescent lure for those fish with sight. Others go blind. But no marine creatures adapted to deep ocean are going to have the level of visual acuity and sensory dependence on sight that terrestrial creatures often have.
true, but consider other sighted animals but which have a different dominant sense: dogs (smell), moles (touch), platypus (electric-fields)
even sight-dominant animals may have radically different vision to ours. Cats for example are more sensitive to motion than to static resolution
How we obtain our data about the world is a huge influence over how we conceive of it. I wonder how different programming would be were we to do it entirely by touch
All of your examples are related to food acquisition. Consider /imagine the non-sighted analogues of them, and how 'successful' they are/would be e.g. a worm the size of a mole[0] & how trivial it would be for predators to prey on it.
yes i guess the evolution of our vision was driven in part by hunting (being able to resolve animals at a distance) and gathering (being able to discern colours of berries)
My point is: these creatures evolved more specialised senses to improve their food-gathering, but they also all have eyes. Perhaps eyes convey a general advantage, regardless of how you find food?
also the medium in which we primarily exist (i.e air).
If we existed in water, or in soil, then the collection and classification of light would not be as important.
I think the vast amount of seeing marine creatures is a massive counterexample. Evolutionary biologists think that the ability to detect any photons grants an advantage: in environments where there is light, eyes evolve, even when the light is dim. It's only in completely lightless environments that eyes no longer provide an advantage (i.e. abyssal plain or caves).
Agreed, the sea creatures have evolved to capture even more light. I'm only guessing, but I would think the pressure and temperature sensors on fish would be more important than sight?
You mean, sensors to detect at a distance? For temperature, most deep-sea creatures have large amounts of insulation to survive the cold & thus would be difficult to detect (especially since water is also an insulator). For pressure, those exist and are called tendrils/antennae.
It is theorized that cephalopods can see color through chromatic aberration because of the unusual shape of their pupils. They don't have cone cells like humans.
If you are a predator and carry a search light, chances are your prey will learn what your search light means. If you are prey, would you think it is a good idea to advertise "there's something to eat over here"?
Think about the return on investment on these: how much energy to grow and power vs. the improved food gathering. Also: would this make the creatures easier to find by predators?
Galagos developed large eyes rather than sonar, true. I refer you to my other comment:
> Perhaps eyes convey a general advantage, regardless of how you find food?
Most people get a lot of information from their environment from passive sonar...how "echoey" a room is, for example. People can take this ability much further.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH0aihGWB8U
I'm visually impaired. I tried the apple watch a couple of months ago, but concluded it wasn't for me because using VoiceOver imposes such a delay that it's not noticably faster than taking my phone out of my pocket. This braille watch might be much more practical.
I'm seeing a lot of healthy scepticism in the comment section. I'm visually impaired, not blind, so I haven't checked this page with accessibility tools. And, although I've heard about a lot of failed kickstarters, I'm not good ad judging them. But if this is real, and gets built, I'd love to try one out.
Hi, this is Dennis Jung from Dot Incorporation
At the current moment, we are revamping our website https://dotincorp.com/ - our goal is to make all information available in both text and audio forms and leave no one behind.
We would like to apologize for any inconvenience. Meanwhile, you can visit our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/dotsmartbraillewatch to find out about our latest updates and news.
Thank you.
It is a tiny magnet inside a solenoid. At each end of the solenoid there is a steel part, which the magnets stick to when on or off. To switch state the coil is energized. Hall effect (or other) sensors can tell where the magnet is and what state the pin is in. It doesn't use any power when it's holding state but switching can consume a relatively high amount of power.
The clicky pen mechanism is actually patented, and it also can't be made as small as you'd like for this.
Does it really? This kind of mechanism is not reliable for 10k switches even... (Due to vibration damaging the pin.) And solenoids are nowhere near as small.
It may use nitinol wire, which can work with smaller latches. They can last trillions of cycles. I really doubt it though, making something at that size would be extremely expensive, unless they figured out a very simple way to work it.
Possibly, but then it would require an even longer throw to engage the latch (clicky pens extend past their writing position when clicked, in order to catch their latches and then settle into writing position).
I could potentially see technology like this being useful even for people without vision issues. The ability to read information from a display without needing to glance down at the watch would be great.
There are apps out there for phones and smartwatches that will vibrate text messages in Morse code. With any sort of determined study someone can pick up basic (~5 WPM) Morse code in about a week.
Unfortunately the best way to increase speed with Morse code is to learn to recognize entire letters as one object and not count "dots" and "dashes", which is much easier with sound over flashing lights or vibrations.
The made the mistake of asking this to my gf who is a teacher for visually impaired kids. Braille is reading, and listening to earbuds is not reading. We teach our sighted kids to read even though they could just all have audiobooks, just like we should teach children Braille even though they can still listen.
Another good argument she made was it's about multiplexing. What if someone wanted to learn the time while listening to an engaging conversation, they wouldn't want to stop listening just to check the time.
What kind of logic is "people need to do something more difficult because it's easier for people who aren't the same as me"?
Also, who's to say that people shouldn't be encouraged to use audiobooks rather then read text-based liturature? When listening to an audio book I can do many other things like study for an exam or program. I can't read a book via text and write software at the same time.
I don't think we should handicap people by making them feel like it's "better" to do something that's harder for them for some reason. Blind or not.
> Another good argument she made was it's about multiplexing. What if someone wanted to learn the time while listening to an engaging conversation, they wouldn't want to stop listening just to check the time.
Most people don't wear watches and it's usualy considered rude to pull out your phone mid-convorsation. I always wear a watch and so people just say "do you have the time"?
If you can't ask Siri you can just ask whoever you're talking to. Also, if you express you want to know the time and they say "I don't know" you can then just ask Siri and tell them. It works out nicely.
> Most people don't wear watches and it's usualy considered rude to pull out your phone mid-convorsation. I always wear a watch and so people just say "do you have the time"?
> If you can't ask Siri you can just ask whoever you're talking to. Also, if you express you want to know the time and they say "I don't know" you can then just ask Siri and tell them. It works out nicely.
The point is that people _can_ look at their watch or smartphone while still listening in on the conversation. It's hard to hear and pay attention to two different things at the same time.
> Why don't you just study for your exam and write code in audio?
I see no reason why, given enough work, a sufficient audio-interfaced IDE cannot be created. I think that is the way we should go. A real AI tied to a speach processor and a polog-like system would be the best UX for programming possible.
Think of Star Trek, "Computer, do X, Y, Z and then run that program".
I definetly don't think text is the best interface with a computer or any system for that matter. That's why I'm saying what I'm saying.
And for now, we're talking about telling the time, not expressing a perfect proof for infinitly complex ideas. I think Siri is good enough for that query as it stands.
I have been working for the past 7 years with a blind programmer. With a "tactile" watch, he can quickly know what time is it without minimal interaction with the hardware (open the lid, touch the watch, close the lid) and without disturbing the current course of action with other people. The same way you quickly check your watch.
What I see as really good if it can hit the market at that price is that it will help push down the price of braille strips. At the moment a strip costs about 100€ per cell. If you want a 80 cell strip to do some programming, it costs new about 8000€...
Wouldn't that be better served by a notch on the ring that rotates as time goes? An inner ring could do minutes and small/large bumps can help identify the time down to the closest 5 minute increment
The machinery to translate scalar time into discrete bump movement is going to be complicate, fragile and costly, while rotating a ring instead of the single arms is feasible, has been done already and only need tactile feedback for feeling the relative positioning.
What you've said can and does work for telling time, but from watching a few of their videos it looks like the watch part of this device is a secondary function. It connects to your phone and will display the caller's name or text messages like other smart watches, but in braille. I can't read braille, so don't know how effective that is with the limited space. It would be interesting to hear from a blind person what their current state of electronic connectedness is since this type of device is supposed to improve the parity between blind and non-blind individuals.
One of the cooler things mentioned in one of the videos (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmpl81WmFSo) was that they developed their own magnetic actuators that are a 10th of the cost (if you believe the marketing) of existing ones. I haven't verified any of those claims, but if true does mean their braille tablet could be an affordable reality.
Every braille display strip ever? I mean this isn't exactly big itself, as in, it hasn't proven to be big yet. There was also a tactile clock, iirc involving a pair of spheres on a dial instead of pointers.
The scroll jacking is really atrocious on my phone. It forces me to go incredibly slowly. Scroll jacking of any kind shouldn't be a thing, but this is worst than most other instances of it.
That looked a bit like blogspam, or whatever the word it. It wasn't very information-dense, anyway.
The manufacturer seems to be here: http://fingerson.strikingly.com/. I guess it's a smart watch since it pairs over BT with a cell phone, and can show notifications from the phone. It can show the current time without a phone connection, yay. No custom installable apps on the watch itself as far as I could see, but perhaps something can be done through the phone, too.
Can somebody please explain how they count their Braille cells? From reading Wikipedia, a "cell" should be 2x3 dots. The site says the watch has 4 cells, but it clearly has more than 2x3*4 = 24 dots; I count 30. Also the middle cell seems to be split by the vertical line? Very confusing.
The five minute audio podcast has interviews with the company and with users and explains a bit about why this is different to existing braille displays.
It's true there are 4 cells x 6 dots = 24 dots.
rests are just the carvings and design, same applies to the mid line to provide visually impaired user to sense "left" and "right"
too cool - I'd love one of these for those long meetings / dates / presentations etc so I can just casually "feel" what time it is without being noticed looking at my watch or phone. I'd have to learn at least a subset of braille (numeric digits?) but it could actually be interesting to do that too.
Yeah but after the security geeks tear it apart there will be offshoots... Sandwatch and Burnberger. Better to wait for the sesame seeds to settle before biting off more than you can chew.
What a world we live in.