According to a report on Ubergizmo, the Dot smartwatch sports four groups of Braille with six dots in each group, which allows the smartwatch to raise the Braille and make four characters available at a time at a cycle speed that ranges between 1-100 per second.
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Dot is a wearable device, which comes with four cells of six actively shifting dots, which can make four Braille letters at one time by rising and falling. Users will be able to pull texts from their phones, for example, and read them on the watch’s surface.
Dot co-founder and CEO Eric Ju Yoon Kim aims at increasing Braille literacy among the blind through the Dot smartwatch.
South Korean startup Dot is set on bringing the smartwatch experience to a market that has been missing out until now: blind and visually impaired people. “Wouldn’t you rather read it yourself and hear your girlfriend’s voice saying it in your head?”
The smartwatch uses haptic technology to provide information in real time via touch. What’s different about the Dot, though, is how it communicates such notifications to the user: using Braille.
The tiny screen on a smartwatch can be maddeningly hard to read even for someone with 20/20 vision, so for anyone with visual impairments, models like the popular Apple Watch or LG Watch Urbane definitely aren’t an option. The device’s relatively low cost of $300 and 10 hour battery life is just the icing on the cake. Reported by the World Health Organization, 285 million people are living with severe visual impairments globally, with 39 million qualifying as legally blind. More details in the meantime jump over to the official Dot website here.
Dot is scheduled to be released in December of this year and according to reports, the company will start with 10,000.
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Dot’s investors have also tested Braille screen modules at ATMs and train stations in South Korea that are updated in real-time, further working to include this demographic in the technology age.
