Peter DaSilva for The New York Times

The featureless glassy screens of touch-screen phones may seem like a forbidding barrier for blind users, who often rely on tactile clues to feel their way around. But a pair of engineers at Google, T.V. Raman, who is blind, and Charles Chen, who is sighted, have developed software that makes the touch-screen T-Mobile G1, which uses Google’s Android software, more accessible to blind users. They hope the technology will also be useful to anyone who needs to operate a phone without looking at the screen, like drivers.

Back in January, I profiled Mr. Raman, who has a long history of adapting technology to his needs. I thought the work on touch screens he was doing with Mr. Chen was intriguing:

Since he cannot precisely hit a button on a touch screen, Mr. Raman created a dialer that works based on relative positions. It interprets any place where he first touches the screen as a 5, the center of a regular telephone dial pad. To dial any other number, he simply slides his finger in its direction — up and to the left for 1, down and to the right for 9, and so on. If he makes a mistake, he can erase a digit simply by shaking the phone, which can detect motion.

If that is hard to conceptualize, now you can see it in action. Mr. Raman and Mr. Chen have created five videos to demonstrate the first installment of their work, which includes a “shell” application that operates an Android device, a dialer and a method for inputting text.

The applications themselves are available in the Android Marketplace, an applications store for the G1. Mr. Raman said that based on comments posted there, more sighted people than blind people were using the applications. That’s perhaps not surprising, since blind users may not have been inclined to purchase a touch-screen phone, even one with a keyboard like the G1. But it seems to validate Mr. Raman’s approach in developing technologies not just for the blind, but for anyone who cannot look at the screen.

“People are saying they are using it in their cars,” Mr. Raman said.

The “shell” application has an interesting location function that combines GPS or cell tower location data with Google Maps and the G1’s compass.

For Mr. Raman, who was once dropped off by the Google employee shuttle on the opposite side of the street from his usual drop-off location and walked two blocks before realizing he was heading the wrong way, it’s pretty useful technology. “You just touch it, and it tells you which direction you are heading in, the location you are close to, and the cross streets,” he said.