NEW DELHI: A 29-year-old Indian inventor on Tuesday won $50,000 to
help him make a new low-cost mobile phone for the blind that uses a
Braille display.
Sumit Dagar, an industrial designer from New Delhi, beat thousands to
win the money from watch company Rolex, which announced the five
winners of its Awards for Enterprise scheme.
Dagar is developing a phone with a display panel of tiny bumps that
can be varied in height independently to form characters in Braille, a
system of reading for blind people invented by a Frenchman in 1824.
In design, there is a certain negligence for minority groups as
compared with the majority, Dagar told AFP, explaining why he had
decided to take on the challenge.
Design is something that bridges the gap between users and
technology, he added.
He said the first prototype using a Braille screen that can display
text messages and names would be ready in the next six months, with a
smartphone incorporating maps and GPS technology part of his future
plans.
The prototype is the phone of the 1990s. It's just that the display
is in Braille, he explained.
Phones that convert text into speech are already available for the
estimated 285 million people worldwide who are blind or visually
impaired, and Dagar faces competition from other designers vying to
integrate Braille technology.
South Korean manufacturer Samsung won a design award in 2006 for a
prototype Touch Messenger phone that was developed in China allowing
users to send and receive text messages in Braille.
But no Braille phone has been commercialised, said Dagar.
Experts say the Apple iPhone has also been revolutionary for many
blind people in the rich world because of the number of applications
designed for them, such as one that announces their exact location.
India is home to about one fifth of the world's blind people,
according to the World Health Organization.
On 11/30/12, Surendra Salgaonkar) surendra.salgaonk...@gmail.com wrote:
Please: instead of giving link, copy the artical. Sometime mobile does not
open the link...
Thank you good luck!
Surendra Salgaonkar
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-Original message-
From: Prashant Ranjan Verma
Sent: 30.11.2012, 8.55 am
To: accessindia@accessindia. org. in
Subject: [AI] Indian inventor Sumit Dagar wins $50, 000 from Rolex to
develop low-cost Braille phone - Economic Times
Article at
http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-11-27/news/35385815_1_brai
lle-blind-people-text-messages
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