Designed a product & aid for visually impaired people to help have paper documents read aloud.
Client:
MY ROLE:
Product & Graphic Designer
WORKING WITH:
Engineers & Coders.
SECTOR:
A11Y, Visual Impaired
DATE:
Jun ‘13
How might we help those who are visually impaired have any paper document read to them any time they wish?
overview
iPhones (and other devices) already have a function called voice over built in as standard, which will turn any text into words, that the iPhone can then read aloud.
And with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) apps, a photograph of text can become words, that the iPhone can then read. But there was no way for the visually impaired person to take that perfect photo of the text, for the phone to read. The Giraffe Reader was born.
Shani, our visually impaired tester, using our Giraffe Reader
Allowing users to dock their phone, line up the paper they wish to read (bank letter, food menu, postcard etc) to the base, and then be able to take a steady photo that will then become digital words the iPhone can read out loud.
I made a version open source (free) so anyone can download the net and make one.
This replaced a dedicated bit of kit (called a Screen Reader) that was on the market for $4,000 AUD.
Our design cost $60 AUD for a pre-made or you could download a net and make one yourself for free.
The open source design on ‘instructables’ where I made a tutorial.
I made a version of the design open source, so you could download the net and construct one. I made a video tutorial and placed instructions on instructables.com.
Demonstration of how to make one yourself
Shani talking about the design on Swipe, a Sky News technology news segment.
I made 40+ models to get the design perfect
Shani using the Giraffe Reader
