A day in the life of a blind business man (guest blog)

September 16, 2015 | by

Chris Lewis, the world-renowned telecoms expert and regular presenter on disability issues has kindly offered to share some thoughts with readers prior to his presentation at the Royal Society of Medicine event on the Medical Benefits of Wearables on 23rd November. This is the second of two he has written specially for TTA.

You’re blind: How do you ‘read’, join in social media and find your way around, let alone run a business?

Picture the scene: a blind man walking down the street moving white stick to and fro. He is muttering to himself while clicking a small black thing in his left hand. What is he doing? Actually, he is running his business, doing email, messaging, reading documents, checking-in for his flight and working out the best route using bus and tube to get to the airport. The black device is a mini keyboard, controlling the iPhone in his pocket and it is talking to him via his in-ear Bluetooth device….

Having been registered blind for over 30 years, I am accustomed to the regular question about how the hell do you run a business? I thought it worth while to put this down in writing both as a record of how things stand in 2015, but also as evidence of how my world has changed since the days of cumbersome magnifiers, papers being sent off to be recorded, and very clunky interfaces with early PCs.

Equipment & technology

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MIT’s ‘FingerReader’ to aid sight-impaired in reading

July 17, 2014 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/finger_reader_mit.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]MIT Media Lab is developing a chunky plastic ring that in concept and early stage prototype, assists the sight-impaired in reading normal 12 pt. text in a book, magazine or on screen. The ring is worn on the hand (resembles a collar) and the reader points their finger along the line to be read. The camera embedded in the ring scans line by line and ‘speaks’ through speakers on a PC or tablet connected to the ring. If the finger strays too far from a line, there is a dial-tone like feedback sound. It is different than the conceptually similar Reading Pen as being more strongly in real time and reading faster–whole lines rather than word by word. While primarily for the blind and low vision, one of the MIT developers, Roy Shilkrot, a doctoral candidate, envisions simultaneous (machine) translation to another language. With a market of 285 million visually impaired worldwide–85 percent are over 50 (WHO)–there’s a ready-made market right there and for technologies like the Oxford ‘assisted vision’ project [TTA 11 July]. Mr. Shilkrot is shy on the commercialization subject, but given the positive media reception, he should perhaps think it over. TechCrunch (includes video demo), Mashable, MIT’s release and FAQ. Hat tip to reader Luca Sergio of Ethis Communications/Ethis Healthtech, New York