The smart buttons called Pips, are linked via Bluetooth and use sound to help visually impaired people find their way.
Five-year-old Lennie Anderton lost his sight at just 10 months old, when a tumour damaged his optic nerves.
Getting up and down the stairs used to make him nervous, but a set of Bluetooth-enabled buttons called Pips, have helped him to feel more confident. |
| Lennie playing with a Pip |
The prototype was originally designed to help people with dementia to organise their daily routines.
"You might have one by your bedside that will wake you up, and when you press that one, the next one will start, which might be in the shower," said Nominet's David Simpson, the man who created Pips.
 |
| The Pips can be easily customised |
Once Lennie had tried out the Pips, Mr Simpson realised that they could have much wider applications and Nominet, the company he works for, decided to share the design.
The code and instructions for how to build Pips are now publicly available online, so people can start experimenting with the technology.
Mr Simpson said: "What we really hope is that as people start to play with this and try it out in different scenarios, there can be a whole load of different examples for people with different sensory or cognitive impairments to make use of it.
"You have got to be pretty handy with a soldering iron and you have got to know your way around writing a little bit of code, but we think that that should be accessible to a lot of students, a lot of research organisations."
Sources:[http://news.sky.com/story/bluetooth-buttons-helping-the-visually-impaired-10330676]
No comments:
Post a Comment