A South Korean startup has developed a smartwatch which shows the time, gives turn-by-turn navigation and delivers text through Braille.

With the rise of affordable and accessible wearable tech, conventional (and expensive) Braille displays are falling increasingly far behind. At $300 and with a battery life of around 10 hours, the DOT watch has the potential to revolutionise the way visually impaired people interact with technology. Four groups of moving pins allow the watch to scroll written information to the wearer at a rate of between 1 and 100 Hz. By connecting to a smartphone through Bluetooth, texts, tweets or other short messages can be read without the need for text-to-speech technology. 

The need for speed

Founder Eric Kim was inspired to explore the technology whilst at university. While he and the other students used iPads for note taking and lectures, his visually impaired classmate was slowed down by her bulky and expensive Braille textbooks. Kim notes that “although there are features which blind people may use on the IPad, accessibility is limited. Other adaptive technology devices are often expensive, and there has been no major innovation in the technology, especially for braille.” After talking with other visually impaired students, Kim was motivated to create an affordable, portable device to address this gap in the market.

Limitations and adaptations

Since its inception, the DOT watch has gone through several upgrades informed by visually impaired students at Kim’s university. The result is a sleek, minimalist design with useful functions such as alarms, notifications and even a voice recorder.

Despite the watch’s obvious potential, it has its limitations. By using only four groups of pins, rather than the 28 or 30 found on conventional Braille displays, the DOT watch becomes more portable but more difficult to use for long strings of text. And as pointed out by Emma Tracey to BBC newsbeat, having a free hand to read from the watch whilst out with a cane or dog could be problematic.

But the DOT watch’s true strengths lie in its affordability and accessibility. Royal Blind, based in the UK, estimates that over 150 million people use Braille globally, but the teaching of Braille is still relatively niche. The advent of an inexpensive, portable Braille reader integrated with the latest technology could provide an incredible tool for visually impaired young people around the world.

Moving forward

According to Kim, watches are just the beginning for this technology. “We would like to use this technology to develop a scrolling braille display and wearable device - to bring additional literacy to the vision impaired. Upon completion the braille module will be modified to appear in public places, transportation, and home appliances such as furnaces, microwaves, and rice cookers.   The…team is also in the processing [sic] of creating an affordable iPad-like device that renders various shapes and mathematical equations, as well as text, using multiple braille cell arrays.”

The DOT watch will be available in the USA from the end of the year, with plans to expand to the global market in 2016.

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