Stanford's 6Dot seeks to become an Apple for the Blind | Hacker News Reader

Stanford's 6Dot seeks to become an Apple for the Blind

spiritofsv.blogspot.com

61 pointsjacoblyles8 comments

It would seem remiss for a story with such a headline to not have a comment that points out that Apple do a pretty good job of being Apple for the blind...

Here's just one random article in that vein:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2008/09/association-for-th...

Apple has definitely done a good job in accessibility. I think the article may be trying to draw a parallel between the way that Apple has done so much to design beautiful products that enable us to be more productive, efficient, etc. and the work that 6dot appears to be doing specifically for the blind community. If 6dot really does what they claim, perhaps they will transform the way blind people experience the world in the same way that Apple has changed all our lives.

Yay for accessibility at Apple! And let's get moving, Google!

Don't forget to check out their kickstarter campaign: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/6dot/6dot-braille-labele...

I had a classmate in college that was blind and all he had was his Apple laptop with VoiceOver enabled. He said that using it felt like he could see it, he described it in exactly those words as well. He said he could see the user interface and it made sense, he was able to take notes and overall used a computer much like other people in the class.

before getting the MacBook my class mate had tried to use Windows based machines and found that they did not work nearly as well and that the voice over stuff in Windows was primitive.

Isn't it odd that the six dots in the logo are not in Braille configuration (two columns of three dots)?

Looks like the older Perkins Brailler ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perkins_Brailler ) has the same layout.

I applaud this group for innovating in the stagnant world of assistive devices. I'm curious to see how their work progresses in a world where braille literacy rates are on the decline and where braille readers are the minority of the US blind population: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braille_literacy

You can also see the team's early work from their initial concept and design in 2008 as part of a "Product Engineering Process" class:

http://designed.mit.edu/gallery/view-2008-DOTit.html

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