Sometimes a large surface with tactile clues is very efficient, especially when one is trying to deal with angles, distances and other relationships between tactile bodies. I would use a tactile atlas as an example. If, for instance, you wanted to judge the distance between New York and Philadelphia compared to the distance between San Francisco and Los Angeles, with a tactile map, you can feel the ratio of distances and understand them by simple comparison.
I agree that just making buttons into tactile objects is more glitz than impact but I can think of some very worthwhile applications for a refreshable tactile screen - flow charts, organization charts, other tools that are assembled with boxes and arrows, a spreadsheet where blank cells often waste a blink's time trying to find the meat of the sheet... cdh On Aug 31, 2009, at 5:21 PM, Chris Blouch wrote: > > I guess I'm not clear on what they claim to have invented. So are they > saying they've created a cheaper way to manufacture refreshable > braille > devices? Or that they can make raised and lowered bumps of arbitrary > shape and size such as lines and circles? The article seems to be > unaware of voiceover on the iphone. I think there is a lot more to > navigation of an iphone than being able to feel the buttons. The whole > flick jesture to jump from link to link or header to header seems more > usable in the real world. At CSun two years ago they had a booth > with a > tactile map of a marina about the size of a desk. Even if that had > been > refreshable, would it be more useful than presenting the same info as > walking directions and points of interest along a route? > > CB > > Yuma Antoine Decaux wrote: >> Here's an interesting read, and how lots of other applications can >> have a touchy feely twist to them. All the better for the visually >> impaired. Until the eye comes out that is >> >> http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-08/iphones-blind >> >> best >> >>> >> > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
