Catching those who fall between the
cracks: haptic communications and
the deaf-blind
Arun Mehta
arun.mehta@bapsi.org
No plan for universal access
While some categories of disabled person, such
as the deaf or the blind, have made significant
progress in Internet access and participation in
such meetings, many others have seen no
improvement in access since the middle ages
●
Smart phone penetration tapering off: opening
up the Net to the rest is not just a human rights
issue, it is commercially vital
●
Also profitable for cloud services would be an
expansion in the manner and ways current users
access their smart phones
●
How important is the use of touch
for communicating language?
Our sense of hearing opened up to verbal
communication with the start of language
●
Sight began to be used for communicating
language with the invention of writing
●
Touch in one direction – user touching phone –
has revolutionized phones.
●
The phone sending information to the user via
touch (haptic communication) could be as big
●
Haptic Communication
Touch has been a valuable way for all species to
communicate.
Touch has always been part of the writing
experience, from the pen to the keyboard and
touch screen
All phones have a vibrate mode – a rudimentary
form of haptic communication
Many joysticks, e.g. for use in gaming or remote
surgery, include haptic feedback
The deaf-blind are at the bottom of
the development ladder
In India, an estimated 1 million deaf-blind, but
not a single one in the Delhi school system
●
Only a few dozen have access to electronic
communications of any kind
●
At a school for 0-6 year old deaf-blind in Rome,
the kids struggle with concepts such as “Mom”
and “Dad.”
●
Yet, when it comes to verbal haptic
communication, they are world-leaders
●
Bapsi's apps for verbal haptics
The Vibration series of free apps takes
advantage of the ability of phones to vibrate: by
turning it on and off for short and long durations,
dots and dashes can be communicated to a deafblind user who knows Morse code.
●
This brings the deaf-blind to a level in
telecommunications that the rest of us reached
170 years ago: we can surely do better
●
A grant from the Internet Society Innovation
Fund allows us to focus on this for a year.
●
Recommendations
Via the setting of appropriate standards for
those so far excluded, such as the deaf-blind,
phones can easily be made accessible to them
●
More research into smart phones and disability:
perhaps at a facility where people can go with
technology needs the way they can go to a
hospital for medical needs
●
●
Training of the disabled in writing apps
IPR should not be allowed to choke research
into haptic communications
●