While the unprecedented pace of modern-day technological advances has ushered in an age of great vanity and wastefulness, some people still have their priorities straight. We saw how an augmented reality device called Esight 3 was helping partially blind people see again, and now, in another move to make the lives of the 285 million visually impaired people worldwide just a little better; a South Korean company ‘Dot’ has come up with the world’s first Braille smartwatch.
There have been many digital devices to help the blind, but most of them use sound which is troublesome and inconvenient. Often, the impaired have to plug-in headphones and detach their senses from surrounding sounds, which are vital to blind people. In case they choose to listen to the sounds a loud, they lose privacy in their private chats.
ALSO READ: eSight 3 Is An Augmented Reality Headset Which Helps The Blind See Again
The Dot fixes this problem as it uses four active dynamic Braille cells where the users can adjust the speed of character updates. The Dot watch can be connected to a smartphone via Bluetooth and will display any notification or SMS from an app or service on the Braille screen. The feature enables the blind people to use apps like Messenger and Whatsapp for communication. Moreover, they can also get directions from Google Maps without using any hearing aids. The users can operate these apps via the simple buttons on the side. The Dot also supports Open API which can help people to code and integrate any function into the hardware.
The Dot took the company three years to develop, and the company is now finally ready to start delivering the revolutionary devices to some 140,000 backers. They will ship 100,000 watches in 2017, starting from March. They plan to send the rest of the 40,000 orders next year. Each piece costs around $320.
Learn more about the product through the video below!
