
Bitlab: Tactile tablet for blind and visually impaired people - fgeorgy
http://blitab.com/
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ndarilek
As a member of this product's target market (blind myself) I wish they'd put a
bit more effort into making their site accessible. There appear to be various
images with no useful alt text, for instance. I also wish the front page
actually tried to _market_ to me. Would be nice to know what OS this is
running, whether it's a full-featured Android device or just something I can
send files to, whether I can run it as a peripheral with my desktop, etc. I'm
a bit worn out on all the fluffy "making blind people more independent and
employable" messaging I see from these types of projects which seems to ignore
the fact that I'm _already_ quite independent and employable, and maybe at the
end of the day I think about things _other_ than my "independence and
employability metric."

Interesting tech, and if the price isn't prohibitive I'd be down to buy one.
But I wish more folks in this space designed traditional landing pages and
actually made them accessible. Too many access tech companies don't focus on
their message or don't convey it in a way that lets me know what any
reasonable buyer would want to know.

Ugh, WTF, so I click on their preorder link, which is apparently a JavaScript
anchor, and my screen reader gets no indication that a preorder
page/box/whatever has come up. Maybe I could poke the page a bit longer and
find one, but I think I'll pass. I hope the final product is built better than
this landing page. Don't like being so critical but it doesn't look like any
usability testing for the target market was done with this page and it kind of
befuddles me.

~~~
honua
Recently I started to experience some dark spots in my vision. On my way to
the ophthalmologist I was reflecting on vision and how my life now seems to
depend on it. I actually wondered if I would still read Hacker News if I were
blind. I understand that my perspective may be very ignorant, but I would be
glad to know more about your daily life such as: what device you use already
to read Hacker News? What you do for work? What technology most interests you?
Thanks for sharing your first comment, it's really helped me already.

~~~
ndarilek
It's hard to answer your questions definitively but I'll give them a shot:

What device do I use?: I don't use any one device. My main computer is a
laptop running Linux and the Orca screen reader, but I've used Windows and
NVDA before. I've had multiple Android phones/tablets and have used IOS. Last
decade I used OS X heavily but transitioned away after a few years. Most
devices have some level of accessibility built-in these days, so there isn't
one single thing I'd use, just as a sighted person might use a laptop/desktop
at their desk, a phone on the go, etc.

What do I do for work?: Again, probably the same as many here. I've done
contract development on Android and the web, and am currently launching my own
company. Nothing surprising or different.

What technology interests me?: I guess it depends on the day. :) I'm a web and
mobile developer so tend to be more up on things like React, React Native,
etc. I particularly enjoy working with mobile tech because there are lots of
ways in which a mobile device with camera/GPS/lots of processing
power/numerous connectivity options can tell me things about my world given
the right apps and services. 8 years ago, running an errand meant I grabbed my
phone, MP3 player, bluetooth GPS receiver and the PDA to which the receiver
paired that ran accessible mapping software. Now I just grab my phone and it's
much more capable on its own, handling GPS, OCR for reading documents, etc. I
think there are a number of ways mobile tech can improve how we interact with
our world, and I'm starting companies to explore those.

------
mwcampbell
The title was mistyped. It's Blitab.

