Last Updated on: 12th March 2014, 04:30 pm
I don’t want to completely slag Chueh Lee. I really think he has the best of intentions. I guess I just want to ask the question. Would you, as a blind person, want a touch-sight camera? You’re supposed to aim the camera by…placing it against your forehead? Then when you snap a picture, it will show you a braille-like image that you can feel on something similar to a braille display.
Perhaps I am alone here, but I never found that tactile things could be translated directly from images people saw. I found that the more detail someone placed in a tactile map to make it image-like, the less I understood. Tactile maps are great if they’re simple. They can convey messages better than explaining something until the cows come home. But once you put too much detail in it, for me, it becomes blurry and unintelligible. And that, I’m afraid, is what this camera’s images would be for its user.
Plus, the joy of pictures is the ability to share them with others. Yes, you can share these with other touch-sight camera users, but noone else. You can’t show the picture to your mom and say, “Look at my dog chewing on her bone! Isn’t she cute?”
But, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe some blinks would actually find having tactile pictures to be rewarding. Maybe I’m all wet. Maybe something useful will come out of this invention. I hope so, since this camera will likely cost an arm and a leg. It has a braille display in it, and as soon as you put a braille display in something, you can jump the price up a few grand. Yes, a few grand.
So, am I crazy? Would you want one of these?
