BDot: a special screen guard for the visually impaired

BDOT, A special screen guard for the blind

o the BDot screen guard, a special screen guard for the Blind, having tactile feedback in the form of braille dots. We have recently designed it to facilitate faster typing and dialing by blind people on a touch screen device. With the more recent trend toward touch screen devices, Keypads have vertually disappeared from almost all the smart phones. The blind have been traditionally using such devices to connect to the digital world. More often than not, they feel lost when starting to use a touch screen device, e.g. a mobile phone which is the lifeline for comunication for anybody in the modern age of communication. Thankfully the prices of these devices have also come down substantially making them affordable for anybody. Android is the most popular platform these days and also one of the most accessible ones. However, it is also very recently that accesibility has seriously been taken care of at google and so a lot of rough edges remain which do create impediments in the smooth user experience for the visually impaired. One of the problems is the lackluster response time specially on the lower end devices. It means that the blind user trails his finger over the screen and the ikons are anounced after some delay. This issue creates a lot of hurdels while typing and dialing phone numbers. It is here that the BDot screen guard comes into play. BDot is a special screen guard with a number of dots placed in a tactical manner so that the user experience can be significantly enhanced while typing and dialing phone numbers. This screen guard has the potential to solve another pressing problem for the visually impaired user while using a touch device. It’s almost always impossible to quickly dial numbers in a noisy environment i.e. while traveling in a public transport or while walking on roads. This function becomes much easier if the user can master various dots and dials by following the dot patterns. If the dots are combined with the vibration feature present specially in android phones, it will result in a significantly enriched experience. Same also holds true for composing sms. The good thing about these screen guards is that it also allows possibility for customisation according to individual preferences, although we suppose that the positioning of the dots on the current screen guard is best suited for faster typing and accurate dialing of phone numbers. However, there may be users who may like more or lesser number of dots according to their unique preferences. In order to cater to their demands we have at least 4 different types of screen guards for all devices. Apart from facilitating typing, Dots have also been placed at selected positions which almost always house controls for various apps or within apps. Although I myself have been using touch devices for quite long now, I find my productivity significantly enhanced after adopting these screen guards for various devices. Currently these screen guards are available for popular models like iPhone 5s, iPhone 5, Moto E 1st and 2nd generations, Moto G 1st and 2nd gen, Xolo q700 etc and other devices will be supported on special request. We also provide dotted screen guards for iPads and iPods.