How the Blind Are Reinventing the iPhone

[ronjor]

Liat Kornowski

Maria Rios, 66, woke up at 6am. She got out of bed in her little second floor apartment on the north side of Central Park, and checked her iPhone for the weather. Then she felt around in her closet, where she had marked her navy blue garments with safety pins, to tell them apart from her black ones. In the adjacent room, her roommate Lynette Tatum, 49, picked out a white sweater and dark denim slacks. She used her VizWiz iPhone app to take a photograph and send it to a customer-service rep who lets her know what color the item is.

For the visually impaired community, the introduction of the iPhone in 2007 seemed at first like a disaster -- the standard-bearer of a new generation of smartphones was based on touch screens that had no physical differentiation. It was a flat piece of glass. But soon enough, word started to spread: The iPhone came with a built-in accessibility feature. Still, members of the community were hesitant.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technolog...iphone/256589/

[FanJ]

WOW, amazing !!! Thanks Ron.

[farmerlee]

Thats awesome! Its great to see modern technology not just entertaining us but making a real difference in peoples lives.

[Mrkvonic]

That's nice.
Mrk