Physical tactile buttons for touch screen devices | Hacker News Reader

Physical tactile buttons for touch screen devices

tgdaily.com

34 pointsleejw00t3547 comments

The immediate benefit is that this makes, or with a little refinement (not sure how small the tactile areas can be), touch screens properly accessible to the blind without changing anything on the software interface. That is a very good thing, as it's accessibility, but layered on top of what exists. I wonder if it can do Braille? 'Cause that would just be cool.

I'm not really in to having it for standard UI, I prefer the idea of some kind of electromagnetic field providing the haptic feedback, something a bit less.. crude? Obvious? something like that.

It'll be nice not only for the blind (assuming Braille or something comparable is feasible with this technology) but for those of us who'd like to be able to touch-type, which is tough with existing touch-screens.

Touch-typing on any little keyboard like that is near impossible. On a normal keyboard, you're moving multiple fingers short distances. While on a little keyboard you're moving two fingers longer distances (key-wise, not actual distance). This makes it much harder to touch type since it's harder to judge where your fingers have to go.

This is at least my experience with little cellphone hard-keyboards, maybe it's different for others.

Regardless, braille would be really cool. Assuming the screens were high enough resolution (that is, could raise itself up accurately enough to make small dots) to display it.

I've taught myself to type without looking on my Android (holding it portrait too, not landscape). I do rely pretty heavily on the auto-correct feature to help prevent gibberish, though.

I can sorta do that with the ICS keyboard, the actually half decent predictive/auto-correct's what makes it possible.

Braille would be easy to implement too, both Android and iOS control fonts at the system level (well, usually on Android) so all you have to do is add a Braille font and you're done.

I wonder if the buttons can be relocated in real-time? Imagine a radio dial or fader that you could feel rotating or sliding under your fingers with resistance as it reached the end of allowed travel.

Pretty cool technology.

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