Households near roads will sigh sadly at this, car noise enthusiasts will hum: The Senate just passed (unanimously) a bill making it mandatory for all electric cars to emit some noise when operating.
Ben Foss was a bright kid, but as a student, he struggled with
reading even the simplest text. Afflicted with severe dyslexia, he relied on
parents and tutors to read him his homework since the words on the page made
no sense to him. At Stanford, he managed to earn two advanced degrees by
laboriously scanning books and then running them through synthetic speech software
so he could comprehend the words.
Canes and guide dogs are useful for the blind, to be sure, but they're far from perfect. Enter the next generation of guidance for the blind: the Smart Cane, a cane-like device that senses obstacles and provides navigational tools with RFID technology that is similar to what is used by shopkeepers to stop theft.
We've written a lot about touchscreen technology, both existing and near future, but there's an inescapable limitation if you're a user with impaired or zero vision: touchscreens accept your touch, but usually respond solely with visual information. Now Finnish scientists have devised a way to remedy that, and it's a darn clever re-interpretation of Braille.
Scientists in Germany have demonstrated an amazing new display with a surface that can physically change twice per second to act as a moving "tactile screen." Its potential for the blind or visually challenged is immediately obvious.
