First Ever Braille Smartwatch Announced

Dot is a wearable that has four “cells”, with six actively shifting dots that rise and fall to make four letters at a time.

A South Korean tech company has developed the first smartwatch that supports Braille. “Wouldn’t you rather read it yourself and hear your girlfriend’s voice saying it in your head?”

Users can change the speed at which these characters refresh, which has the same effect for people with impaired vision as scrolling fast or slow through a text. What’s different about the Dot, though, is how it communicates such notifications to the user: using Braille.

The smartwatch will be connected to Bluetooth 4.0, which then allows texts to be converted into decipherable Braille characters. Dot can run for 10 hours per charge, however, as per the company, average users can charge the smartwatch every five days, reports Digital Trends.

People suffering from visual impairments can now enjoy the latest technology not just through voice commands to Siri or the text-to-speech feature on most devices today, but through the popular smartwatches as well.

Dot CEO Eric Ju Yoon Kim told Tech in Asia that the industry-leading braille input devices connect to computers via USB, cost thousands of dollars, and aren’t quite as portable. As indicated by the start-up, 95 percent of visually impaired people can not read, due in part to the price of Braille readers, along with the fact that only 1 percent of normal books are translated into Braille. Dot has the goal of offering a more affordable device to increase literacy among the blind. The Dot smartwatch is likely to be launched this December and is expected to be priced under $300, provided the startup secures $1 million during its second round of funding in August, according to reports.

Ultimately, Kim wants to implement the same technology used by Dot into other products, such as microwaves, rice cookers, and ATMs.