Google Engineer Adapts Cell Phone for Blind

By SUNITA SOHRABJI
indiawest.com February 19, 2009 02:10:00 PM

How functional would your cell phone be if you couldn’t see its numbers?

For many blind users, including Google engineer T.V. Raman, the small keyboards of a cell phone can be daunting.

So Raman is developing software to adapt T Mobile’s G1 touchscreen phone — which uses Google’s Android software — to make it friendlier for blind people and others with limited vision, such as the elderly.

“The small keyboard of a cell phone is not easy to use, particularly if you need one hand free,” Raman told India-West in a telephone interview from Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. The blind generally need one hand free to hold a guide dog.

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