By: Nick Gambino

A new smart watch, the Dot, catering to the blind, is being built that will allow the visually impaired to read their digital data in braille.

The blind or visually impaired have until now had to rely on Siri or other digital readers to “read” the data on their smartphone. While in the non-digital world books and other reading material are available in braille this has not always translated over into the digital world, though we find the world is increasingly headed in a digital direction.

The Dot’s technology, while not new, has not been applied to the world of smartphones and smart watches before. It employs a series of pins and magnets that can move around on the watch face to create different braille characters, four at a time, at speeds that can be adjusted for comfort.

In this way one can read their text messages, e-mails and data from various other apps through Bluetooth just as they would any other material in braille. This puts the material back under their own control as opposed to having it read to them.

The dot is currently being developed in South Korea. The CEO and co-founder of the Dot, a startup company, discussed the motivation behind his innovation with Tech in Asia, “Until now, if you got a message on iOS from your girlfriend, for example, you had to listen to Siri read it to you in that voice, which is impersonal. Wouldn’t you rather read it yourself and hear your girlfriend’s voice saying it in your head?”

You would expect something like this to cost an arm and a leg but the intention is to keep costs down and not go over the price of what a non-blind individual would pay for a device. “Ninety percent of blind people become blind after birth, and there’s nothing for them right now – they lose their access to information so suddenly,” Kim explained to Tech in Asia. “Dot can be their lifeline, so they can learn braille and access everyday information through their fingers.”

The idea is for the “braille watch” to cost no more than $300 when it comes to the U.S. Currently a braille-enabled computer costs somewhere around $3000. Not exactly fair is it? With an estimated 285 million people globally with severe visual impairment this isn’t exactly a “niche market.” For many born blind, braille is the only way they’ve ever been able to read.

The Dot is set to go on sale in the U.S. in December of this year. I may not be the target consumer for this product but that doesn’t stop me from being excited for its release.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nick Gambino is a regular script writer and tech beat reporter for NewsWatch. He lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and daughter.