First Braille smartwatch features learning system for visually impaired

PanARMENIAN.Net - A group of university students in South Korea have developed a world first smartwatch that enables blind people to read messages from their smartphones, the Sidney Morning Herald reports.

Called Dot, the device makes use of pins that rise and fall at customizable speeds using magnets to show four braille characters at any one time.

Until now, most blind people have had to rely on their smartphones reading out messages to them, which can be impersonal, creators of braille smartwatch say according to the website.

Development has yielded a battery life of 10 hours, which Dot's creators say will give average users five days between charges.

The device makes use of Bluetooth technology, which tethers it to a smartphone, allowing it to retrieve text from applications like iMessage.

Building a braille smartwatch, however, comes with a catch: the U.S.-based National Federation of the Blind estimates that just 10 percent of visually impaired people actually learn braille, while the UK's Royal National Institute of Blind People reports literacy figures of less than 1 percent. That is why it is so handy that Dot also features a braille-learning system, Engadget says.

"90 percent of blind people become blind after birth, and there's nothing for them right now: they lose their access to information so suddenly," Dot co-founder and CEO Eric Ju Yoon Kim said. "Dot can be their lifeline, so they can learn Braille and access everyday information through their fingers, which is the goal of Braille literacy."