Thimble is a Bluetooth finger-glove that hooks up to your smartphone and works as a Braille display. By pulsing Braille shapes onto the fingertip via an "electro-tactile grid array", all kinds of messages can be conveyed to the user.
But that's not all. The concept design, by Erik Hedberg and Zack Bennet, also has a camera inside to scan words in the real world and transcribe them into Braille, along with a microphone for voice control. Thus the user can ask where they are, the phone will provide the location via GPS and the Thimble will read out the answer. Here's a slow-moving video showing how it would work.
The phone, in this case, is an iPhone, as iOS already has great accessibility features for the sight-impaired, and already works just fine with existing Braille displays. Hedberg and Bennet are "working on a patent", and as the product is actually fairly straightforward, we're hoping to see real, working versions in the future.
Thimble - There's a Thing for That [Vimeo via DVICE]
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