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Concept: iPhone-connected Smart Finger For The Visually Impaired

iOS devices come with great accessibility support. It is fairly easy for developers to implement in their apps, and iOS is packed with accessibility functionalities out of the box. The Thimble is “a concept multimedia finger glove” designed by Erik Hedberg and Zack Bennet that has an optical scanner right above the finger tip which is capable of on-the-fly conversion of text to Braille messages.

We know the iPhone 4 can be controlled with Braillant-32 bluetooth Braille Displays, but this concept is different: the Thimble also acts as a location-aware device that can connect to the internet to pull news and other data and pass them along as Braille messages. From the video below, it also looks like there’s some kind of speech recognition technology in there.

The Thimble is just a concept for now, but I think it would make for a great product to further extend iOS’ accessibility features. [FSM via dvice]

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Federico is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of MacStories, where he writes about Apple with a focus on apps, developers, iPad, and iOS productivity. He founded MacStories in April 2009 and has been writing about Apple since. Federico is also the co-host of AppStories, a weekly podcast exploring the world of apps, Unwind, a fun exploration of media and more, and NPC: Next Portable Console, a show about portable gaming and the handheld revolution.

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