Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Tablets and Poor Vision

How can tablets help with poor vision ?

There have been many efforts in the past to assist those with vision problems, with moderate success.
I recently had the opportunity to observe large scale magnification for those with macular degeneration. The user was computer literate and able to navigate complex web pages.

I realized that it would be possible to provide this capability using just a tablet and a large screen display.

The tablet would need to be able to mirror its screen to the TV. Some tablets already have this capability.

An off brand from China, the Matrix One, has worked well for me . The small and uncluttered tablet screen is easy to read on the big screen.

The new Kindle HD is also described as having the mirroring capability, for example.

Of course, it would be useful to have speech recognition. The effect would be to use speech recognition as I am now doing and also control the large screen.

So far I do not see one tablet with good enough capabilities for both screen mirroring and speech recognition. There may be one out there. (Note 12-6-2012: the Nexus 10" appears to have both features.)

Most tablets already have the capability of reading text out loud, an additional benefit. Keep posted.
Dictated to my Nexus 7 December 5th 2012