Making Touchscreens Tactile with Tactus

One complaint that some people have with touchscreens are the lack of physical buttons. They prefer the feel of actually pushing down on a button. For people that are blind or visually impaired, they can use touchscreen smartphones if audible description software is enabled. However this can be a slow process where physical buttons could speed up the process. Well how about combining a touchscreen with physical buttons. Not only that but how about a touchscreen that can have dynamic button and shapes that can move about the screen. Tactus Technology of Fremont, California is working on this touchscreen technology right now and plans to have products available by 2013.

Tactile Advantages
I’ve seen many cell phone design concepts for people with blindness that feature a lot of braille displays. Which is fine but less than 10% of people who are blind know how to read braille. The cause is a combination people losing their sight at an older age, lack of education resources, and increasing text to speech technology. A raised tactile keyboard might be more familiar to the user. Especially on a larger touchscreen like an iPad. Existing text to speech software would give audio feedback on which buttons are being pushed. Of course Tactus’s touchscreen could still bring up braille if the user wishes.

More Than Words
Tactus is not limiting the technology to just keyboards. The touchscreen can also morph out different shapes and controls. Such as slider controls, raised road maps, and video game images. All of which can give a user who is blind better and faster interaction with their touchscreen device.

How It Works
The technology behind Tactus’s touchscreen is very high tech but here’s a simple breakdown. In lieu of a glass or plastic surface on top of the LCD screen, there is a thin and flexible layer. Underneath this layer is another layer with tiny micro sized holes. Fluid is then moved and push up through these holes to raise the top layer when called upon.

Future and Conclusion
Tactus plans to expand the technology beyond smartphones and tablets. In they future they hope to work with other products such as GPS devices, medical equipment, and gaming devices. For more information on the amazing technology watch the video below and visit www.TactusTechnology.com.

Tactus Technology Introduction from Tactus Technology Inc. on Vimeo.