[guide.chat] Can Braille Be Faster Than QWRTY?

From: "Faye, Cathie, and Mike!" <catherineharris1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Guide chat list" <guide.chat@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2012 18:37:35 -0000
 Can Braille Be Faster Than QWRTY?

I think this is a good thing for braille users! 
> Can Braille be faster than QWERTY? App developer thinks so
> By John D.  Sutter, CNN
> (CNN) -- If Mario Romero has his way, we'll all be learning Braille
> soon.
> The post-doc researcher at Georgia Tech University has co-developed an
> app, called BrailleTouch, that could help blind people send text
> messages and type e-mails on touch-screen smartphones without the need
> for expensive, extra equipment.  To use the app, people hold their
> phones with the screens facing away from them and punch combinations
> of six touch-screen buttons to form characters.  The app speaks a
> letter aloud after it's been registered, so there's no need to see the
> screen.
> > The system is designed for blind and visually impaired people, who
> otherwise have to purchase thousand-dollar machines or cumbersome
> "hover-over" (more on that later) keyboards to be able to type on
> no-button smartphones.  But Romero sees a spin-off for the technology:
> The touch-screen Braille keyboard is so fast that sighted people may
> start using it, too.
> > "It may be a solution for everybody to get their eyes off their phone
> so they can walk and text or watch TV and make a comment on a blog,"
> he said by phone.  "It may free the sighted people's eyes" and help
> visually impaired people to type more easily.
> > The free app, which is being developed for Apple iOS and Google
> Android devices, should be available in a matter of weeks, he said.
> > So far, the app has only undergone limited tests, and Romero declined
> to make a pre-release version available to CNN.  In an 11-person
> trial, however, he said, some Braille typists were able to go faster
> than they could on standard, QWERTY keyboards.  One visually impaired
> person, who was already familiar with Braille (you punch the six keys
> in various combinations to make letters) typed at a rate of 32 words
> per minute, Romero said, with 92% accuracy.  Romero himself, who never
> had used a Braille keyboard before, was able to type at about 25 words
> per minute with 100% accuracy after a week of practice, he said.
> > The app will undergo more rigorous testing before it's released, said
> Romero, who is a post-doctoral researcher at the university's School
> of Interactive Computing.  It was developed with the help of Brian
> Frey, Gregory Abowd, James Clawson and Kate Rosier.
> > Smartphones are generally pretty good at reading material on their
> screens to people who have vision problems, he said, but it's usually
> difficult to enter text on the devices.  To get a sense of what it's
> like for a blind person to use an iPhone you can go to Settings,
> General Accessibility, and turn the "VoiceOver" feature on.  When you
> touch a menu item, the iPhone reads the text aloud in a computerized
> voice.  To select something on the screen, you double-tap that item.
> To scroll, you use three fingers.
> > All that works well, Romero said, but typing on an iPhone without
> buttons is a pain.  Another alternative, he said, is attaching a
> hardware Braille keyboard to a smarpthone, but those are difficult to
> carry and are expensive:
> > "The options (blind people) have right now are either too expensive
> and cumbersome or too slow.  Virtual keyboards and soft keyboards --
> like Apple's voice-over keyboard -- are too slow.  
> Or they have options to get hardware that costs several thousand
> dollars."
> > The new app may not alleviate all of those problems.  On Android
> phones, the BrailleTouch app can be programmed in as the phone's
> standard keyboard.  Because of restrictions on iOS, he said, that
> can't happen on an iPhone, so people who want to use the BrailleTouch
> keyboard have to open the app, type into a text document and then
> copy-paste that into an e-mail or text message.
> 
> Romero admits that this app isn't the end-all-be-all in typing.  
> But it's helping create a future, as he said, when "one day we're not
> slaves to the screens."
> > Post by: John D.  Sutter -- CNN
> >
[guide.chat] Can Braille Be Faster Than QWRTY?

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