Iranian Scientists Make Persian-Language Tablet for Blind People
This product is the only braille PDA (personal digital assistant) made in Iran, and its main advantages include full support for the Persian language, technical support in Iran, automatic identification by the operating system, the ability to adjust the prominence of braille points and the lower price compared to the foreign counterparts.
The keyboard of the tablet includes 20 keys, 20 8-pin cells made of hypoallergenic plastic and 20 CR Keys. Its battery can be used for about 10 hours. The internal memory of this tablet is 8 GB and it has a monitor and TV (HDMI). Also, this product has a wireless (Bluetooth) connection with the tablets and smartphones (Android).
“This product is the first braille digital PDA for the blind that can do all the daily tasks like writing, reading, surfing the web and other tasks and it is actually a tablet for the blind,” Ramin Farjad, the chairman of the board of directors of the knowledge-based company, told ANA.
“This device has 64 gigs of memory, of which 43 gigs are available to the user. It also has a modem and can be connected to Wi-Fi through LAN, and given that the Chrome browser is now adapted for the blind, these people can access the Internet. They can also connect to the Android phone through Bluetooth and have Braille support for their Android phone,” he underlined.
In a relevant development in December 2022, a creative product was also produced by an Iranian company which makes the process of accessing the pages of different websites and reading their texts easier for the blind.
"’Follow’ service (internet assistant for the blind) is a product and among the measures by which the company could join the list of creative companies," said Alireza Qassemi, the executive director of the knowledge-based ‘Poli Be Sooye Farda’ company.
He added that the product automatically detects and identifies the main text of a webpage and removes its unnecessary texts, including the advertisement.
“The product makes it possible to switch between different pages of a website and access the main text of that page with the help of speech recognition and text to speech services and the up and down buttons of smart phones,” Qassemi said.
The most common way for users who are blind to surf the web is with a browser and screen reader (also known as text-to-speech software).
Understanding how text-to-speech software helps the visually impaired “read” websites is essential for anyone designing for such users.
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