ELIA Life to roll out tactile displays for the visually impaired

November 5th, 2007 by

Filed under: Displays

A project that saw a prototype form some five years back is finally nearing commercialization, as ELIA Life Technology has recently been licensed to bring a tactile graphic display device and fingertip graphic reader to market. Originally developed by NIST researchers, the aforementioned screen enables individuals to feel an array of images on a reusable surface by raising around 3,600 actuator points into a certain pattern, each of which can be sent electronically to the reader. Separately, a finger-based device utilizes 100 minuscule pins that can be activated as a person scans a given surface, which enables the pins to move across one’s skin as it “translates” the text / image / etc. Regrettably, a concrete release date wasn’t mentioned, but judging by the looks of it, it shouldn’t be long now before it’s widely available to those interested.

[Via Coolest-Gadgets]

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Posted in tactile, blind, Braille, ELIA Life, EliaLife, nist, tactile display, TactileDisplay | No Comments »

Apple envisions tactility on touchscreen keyboards

October 25th, 2007 by

Filed under: Handhelds, Peripherals

Tactile feedback isn’t exactly new to the mobile device arena, but Apple is apparently looking to add a bit of tactility to on-screen keyboards of the future. In a recent patent filing, the gurus in Cupertino have described four arrangements for accomplishing the aforementioned goal, some of which include adding dots / bars to keys and throwing an articulating frame underneath the panel to enable users to feel varying levels of resistance when mashing down. Per usual, we’re left to imagine where such technology could eventually end up (tough job, we know), but considering that this is the third touchpad-related filing seen from Apple in the past 20 days, who knows what is (or isn’t) brewing.

UPDATE: Check it out — seems this diagram looks an awful lot like something designed by Fingerworks. Thanks for the heads-up, Jason!

[Via UnwiredView]

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