Android News
Google app enables blind dialing and more
April 3, 2009 | by Andrew Kameka
Android Apps
The latest entry to the “Hey, That’s Pretty Cool” chronicles: Google’s Eyes-Free Shell and Configuration Manager that enables blind dialing on Android phones. Pressing the touchscreen turns the phone into a virtual keypad that responds to movements. The finger is automatically centered on the 5 button, so swiping right dials 6, up dials 2, diagonal up-left dials 1, etc.
Google engineers Charles Chen and T.V. Raman, who is blind, developed this technology to make phones more accessible to the visually challenged, but it has proven useful to sighted people as well. I don’t advocate dialing while driving, but let’s be honest and acknowledge that it happens. This technology makes it a little safer because users don’t have to look at their screen to make sure they touch the right number.
The Eyes-Free Shell is available in the Android Market (search for ‘Eyes’). Text-to-Speech (TTS) technology also provides signal strength, battery power, time and date, and other information. Video examples are available at the EyesFreeAndroid YouTube channel.
(Stroke Dialer seen beginning at 1:55 mark)
OMG, you are REALLY long winded and slow speaking! It was rather painful sitting through all of that.. and that ROBOT VOICE – who can understand what he/she is saying?! a real voice would be MUCH MUCH better..
glad i have an iphone – much better vision free dialing for that phone than android. its simple – THAT is the key
This is a really clever technique. I’m glad to see Google taking steps to make not just their websites, but their phones more accessible to those who are visually impaired.
I wonder if the Android has zoom and high contrast, features essential to acess a gadget toucscreen by a low vision person.
hey folks just found a COOL NEW APP called Webtalk (check it out on Google Market etc) for Android that speaks aloud any article in the Internet, say cnn, yahoo, ITS A VOICE ENABLD BROWSER!! nice
The sound feedback (the "tick") IS important and a good addition. as is tactile response.
My recent experience trying to figure out which phone I wanted to upgrade to was frustrating. The customer service rep at HTC didn't even know what "accessibility features for low vision" meant. All he could say was "well, there's third party apps for stuff like that. " The Palm rep came right out with "we don't offer anything like that" and you can't even talk to a real person at Blackberry/RIM. The Sanyo rep tried hard to be helpful , but just didn't seem to have access to the information about font enlargement, ASR, or text to speech features. I ended up switching carriers to Verizon just to get the iPhone because Apple could answer my questions. There's a long, long way to go in getting the info to the people who need it.
Something no one has ever been able to explain to me is why the phone keypad is opposite of a adding machine keypad. I am low vision, but I use an adding machine often. Totally messes with my head to try to "touch type" on a phone.