With Tokyo Startup's New Gloves, Deafblind People Get the Digital World at Their Fingertips


  • Technology

With Tokyo Startup’s New Gloves, Deafblind People Get the Digital World at Their Fingertips

  • Post
  • Share

Courtesy of Ubitone, Inc.
Haruki Inaba uses a prototype of Ubitone Inc.’s gloves. The app shows a message that Inaba produced through finger taps in the gloves.

A startup is developing innovative devices to ensure that no deafblind person is left behind in the accelerating pace of the information age.

At a booth at a three-day exhibition for assistive technology in Tokyo in December, Ubitone, Inc. demonstrated its flagship product: an app and a pair of accompanying gloves that, through “finger braille,” facilitate wireless communication for deafblind people.

Developed by the mother of University of Tokyo Prof. Satoshi Fukushima, who is deafblind himself, finger braille makes use of finger taps on the hands of another person to convey messages, which allows for deafblind people to communicate with others, and for others to communicate with them.

Ubitone’s app translates voice or text into the finger braille code and sends it via Bluetooth to the gloves. The fingers of the gloves then vibrate, emulating finger taps and conveying messages to the gloves’ wearer. The app can [...]

Read article at japannews.yomiuri.co.jp

Article Taxonomies

Categories: , Tags: , , ,