A mouse that vibrates to help the blind use computer

Leicester: Scientists looking for ways to help blind people get more out of computers have developed a vibrating mouse and combined it with sonic representations of graphs that would otherwise be inaccessible.

Mike Burton of Glasgow University said at the British Association for the Advancement of Science festival the mouse vibrated every time it met a line on a graph, giving a blind operator a tactile tip-off. "The technique is a very good way of presenting information to blind and sighted people," he said.

Likening the jumping mouse to electronic Braille, he said the most daunting task facing visually impaired people was trying to assimilate information giving an overview of data or events.

Reinforcing the tactile jolt of the mouse, fellow scientist Stephen Brewster said they had developed sound graphs that could be combined with the mouse. Lines on a graph were represented by tones that would vary in pitch according to whether the line was rising or falling. Routers

Source: The Times of India
Dated :11th September, 2002