#HTE

Ford’s Experimental Haptic Glass Helps the Blind “See”

Using outside-of-the-box thinking, Ford has prototyped a “display” for the blind using a material we don’t typically think of as useful to the sightless: Glass. By partnering with Aedo, an Italian research firm that uses digital technology to create interfaces for the blind, they’ve developed a device that can vibrate glass in specific areas, producing tactile “pixels,” so to speak, that can be sensed by touch. Here’s the Ford application:

Aedo plans to take the technology beyond cars with their Haptic Touch project. This involves specially outfitting tablets that would be used in schools with blind students:

Haptic Touch is a system that allows users to interact with touchscreen screens without using [sight]. An extraordinary object to explore images and photographs through haptic sensory stimuli (tactile and sound).

The project involves the installation of an app inside a tablet and the application on the screen, through a dedicated cover, of particular surfaces in relief. Thanks to a set of tactile and auditory sensory stimuli, users can independently explore the various graphic and visual digital contents.

The Haptic Touch project was designed to solve the problem of teaching braille in Italian schools. Educators are less and less able to teach tactile perception to blind children. For this reason Haptic Touch provides the school community with an extraordinary collection of tactile cards, educational games and technological methods to convert visual interactions of touch screens into tangible perceptual sensations.

Haptic Touch is an educational game especially dedicated to blind children to learn braille and all subjects that require the study of images such as geometry, geography, art history, etc.

You can learn more about Aedo here.