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Independence Day

news.microsoft.com

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Re: Independence Day

#31

Post by johnloeber »

kaptain wrote: post #26

It's disappointing to see the cynicism and negativity directed to this announcement. Yes, the presentation is a bit lacking: the website is difficult to read for many and the video seems to be a big ad. But the message is so hopeful. I'm not blind/visually challenged/whatever the correct terminology is, but this announcement/description/advertisement made me happy. It made me happy not because this is another channel…

I'm also disappointed by the cynicism and superficial judgement ("bad web design!") that this piece is receiving.

This might be a serious innovation, easing the lives of a (large!) marginalized group. Blindness is a serious disability, and I'm really happy to see Microsoft taking this step. This is actually something that might help people. Can we appreciate that?

Re: Independence Day

#32

Post by arjie »

xyclos wrote: post #16

"a reminder you're walking by a place with great Chinese takeout" is this just a way to target ads at people with a disability? if all I'm trying to do is get form point A to point B, the last think I want is "interesting facts about history" or targeted ads.

People with good eyesight gain instant knowledge by looking around. This seems like a wonderful way to bring that sort of experience to a person unable to see. It sounds great!

Re: Independence Day

#33

Post by bequanna »

A good reminder that there are novel implementations of existing technology (mobile devices, beacons) that can markedly improve the lives of those with disabilities.

Re: Independence Day

#34

Post by hrktb »

kaptain wrote: post #26

It's disappointing to see the cynicism and negativity directed to this announcement. Yes, the presentation is a bit lacking: the website is difficult to read for many and the video seems to be a big ad. But the message is so hopeful. I'm not blind/visually challenged/whatever the correct terminology is, but this announcement/description/advertisement made me happy. It made me happy not because this is another channel…

What bothers me is that the most important part of this project is to get a lot of existing entities to do something for the visual impaired people (e.g. put bluetooth devices everywhere, create sevices to push the information to users), and I feel this part of the project is brushed away in a "we have great ideas, surely everyone will be conviced to make them possible" attitude.

There is already realtime tracking of the train delays where I live, and it just doesn't work (regularly a train will be displayed as arriving to a station, when clearly it's not there, and 5 min after it gets rescheduled). Telling me in nice video that we'll expand this kind of experience to vuses and a lot of other things, and it will help blind people to workaround unexpected things just feels like wild fantasy.

About the other companies, Apple's doesn't advertise feel good prototypes of "boil the ocean" types of projects. They didn't come with a "wouldn't it be great if you could pay for things with our technology ? Imagine if everyone put this beacon everywhere in the world" video telling fluffy stories in advance.

They prototyped the barcode payment system in their shop, you could actually use it with existing devices, and they're pushing their NFC payment with a nationwide partner networks with working payment terminals from the get go, doing the hard work upfront.

Re: Independence Day

#35

Post by euske »

From what I've seen, iPhone is the de facto standard of mobile phones for visually impaired for now, because its VoiceOver function is pretty well made, and more importantly, its UI experience is far less varied than its competitors, i.e. Windows Phones and Androids. It has already a strong community and support from organizations like AFB. I hope this bring them a more healthy competition among the tech companies.

Re: Independence Day

#36

Post by Rapzid »

This has got to be the first article I've read that has incorporated ambient sound. The loop is terrible, but it's still pretty awesome! The coconuts were annoying though.. I hope more articles introduce ambient sound... I'm imagining this being integrated into novels.

Also, this is fantastic. I can totally see this being of interested to the sighted as well; maybe it would see better uptake than glass.

Re: Independence Day

#37

Post by fourstar »

dbpatterson wrote: post #12
scoot wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, I found the audio combined with the text & images incredibly engaging, although I did wish for a visual cue from time to when I lost my place (I was reading in sync, but got distracted).

Perhaps it worked better on your browser, but the content was so delayed that many times I scrolled past it before it decided to load. So I was constantly having to scroll back and forth to try to figure out whether a blank spot was truly blank (sometimes it was). Pretty frustrating. And the irony is almost too much...

There's a big button in the upper right hand corner for an audio version, ya dingus. Ever thought that might be useful for people who can't read the website?

Re: Independence Day

#39

Post by gsk »

jsmeaton wrote: post #6
oliyoung wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the irony that is for people with vision impairment and that site is hard to read and navigate is strong

My vision is fine and I still had trouble with that site, enough that I closed it early. Terrible scrolling and delayed loading ruined that experience.

They are talking about helping blind people and you are talking about terrible scrolling and closing the website?

Re: Independence Day

#40

Post by mattlutze »

I'm impressed with the scope and maturity of the concept they're presenting here. Small attempts at improving usability of the world for the visually impaired have always been kinda cool -- things like chirping walk-signal actuators at crosswalks -- but have always been disparate and half-baked. It'd be remarkable if Microsoft's mass and momentum behind a system like this could be implemented on a large scale in a city to demonstrate how beneficial a fully baked system can be.

And, to fuel the fire, the page design was top-notch, except for the random 2-column blocks which seem an interesting choice given the nature of variable screen sizes.

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