Many of India’s millions of blind people have been left out of the smartphone revolution, increasing their isolation in a fast-moving world. Sumit Dagar, an alumnus of the National Institute of Design, Bangalore, has designed a prototype of an affordable Braille phone that will open the door to technology.
Sumit Dagar is a 29-year-old, Indian visionary whose technological skills, inventiveness and passion for design have prepared him for a place among today’s young, hi-tech entrepreneurs. He was one of two Indians who recently received a Rolex Young Laureate award. He plans to use the prize money of 50,000 Swiss francs (around Rs 29 lakh) to finance the project.
The phone uses a haptic touch screen, which is comprised of a grid of tiny, height-variable bumps, allowing users to "feel" information. At its most basic level, the phone can be used as a translator — scanning text and converting it into braille — but that’s just the beginning.
Facilitating independence
Using height mapping, the phone can also display visual imagery, and even video and animation, not to mention maps, charts and other graphic forms of communication that are ubiquitous in modern life. The result is a device that could better facilitate independent travel for the visually impaired, and allow access to a much broader range of printed and visual resources that are readily available to the rest of the population.
Dagar’s ambition is to make life far easier for the visually impaired by creating a Braille phone. The idea of adapting mobile phones for use by blind people has been around for a decade. For example, screenreader technology that converts text output on a mobile phone screen into speech has been available – at an additional cost to the user – for many years.
Dagar’s vision is dramatically different, as he is building a phone from scratch with the specific design and capability for blind users via a tactile system based on the Braille alphabet. “I discovered when consulting with blind people that speech output was not necessarily the technological solution that people were looking for,” he explains. “Speech may suit some, but for others, especially in India, there is a problem with the English-language artificial voice; many blind people in my country will just not understand it. Another disadvantage of speech is the lack of privacy when users’ messages or emails are read out by a talking phone.”
The Braille phone will use a simple framework: the screen technology will use pixels to vary height, rather than colour, as on a normal smartphone. A high-resolution screen will therefore be capable of conveying simple Braille text, as well as various shapes, figures and maps. Users will be able to “view” a face using the sense of touch, or follow a map to find their way home. Like existing smartphones, the screen will be touch-responsive, so users can input information and make phone calls easily.
Crucially, the phone will be priced reasonably. “The first generation of the Braille phone will certainly be affordable,” he predicts. “It will be a basic phone, not yet developed into a smartphone, and will ideally be priced at the lower end of the spectrum, around 7,000-9,000 RS [US$126-165]. The real challenge will be in phase 2, with the aim of introducing smartphone technology to enhance the user’s experience, but without driving up the cost prohibitively.”
Rolex officials aren’t the only ones who have been taking note of Dagar’s work. He’s been featured in Fast Company, National Geographic and the Herald Sun of Australia, to name but a few media outlets. And his talk as a TED Fellow explaining the Braille Phone concept has been making waves around the world. (You can see that video below.)
Dagar developed the Braille smartphone concept in 2009, when he was working on his Master’s degree. He continued to work on the project after his studies finished, but it was the brave decision to leave full-time employment to devote time to the Braille smartphone project that marked a major turning point.
The funds from his Rolex Award are a huge benefit, as he was struggling to work full-time on the project and to earn enough to survive. But even more useful, he says, is the publicity he has received and the doors that have been opened to him since the news got out. “It’s as if I’ve become the Prime Minister of India,” he explains. “I’ve been covered by almost all media, from local papers, in the local languages, to national business magazines. I was recently listed by Business Today magazine as ‘one of the 66 reasons to keep faith in India’, in a special article for the 66th year of [Indian] independence.
The Rolex Award has also been useful in making contacts in the technology field, for example, in forming a collaboration with the Indian Institute of Management’s Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship, in Ahmedabad. The collaboration came about, Dagar explains, thanks to an introduction by a Rolex Awards jury member, leading Indian-American entrepreneur and philanthropist Gururaj “Desh” Deshpande.
Teamwork and consultation with various agencies (technical, business, visual impairment) are crucial to the Braille phone project. L.V. Prasad Eye Institute, Hyderabad; a hospital for blind, has given Dagar an invaluable understanding of the needs of blind people; the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi is providing the technology for the phone’s Braille display; a colleague in Rajkot is leading on the electronic materials.
Dagar plans to have a working prototype of the smartphone ready by mid-2014. The next phase of development through to 2016 will accommodate the touch-responsive screen. A later, third version of the phone, will incorporate diagrams, shapes and images, allowing India’s sight-impaired users to transform their lives by joining the technology generation.