Braille gets with times thanks to former Utahn

The question of "what time is it?" for the estimated 40 million blind people worldwide can be quite a daunting one at times. Easily, discreetly and quickly getting the time from a wristwatch can be problematic.

Designer David Chavez took this problem head on and came up with his own solution: the Haptica Braille watch.

Chavez, born and raised in Utah and now currently living in San Francisco, created the Haptica watch to allow "blind people to check the time quickly and accurately without audible disruption," he says on his website.

Haptica has received international awards, including the Spark Design Award, and was recently featured in the 2010 National Design Triennial in the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.

This is not the first watch for blind people, as it comes in a long line of many such inventions. But most of those watches require users to either feel where the hands are or listen as the time is spoken from the watch.

Based on research with students and faculty of the Braille Institute, Chavez found blind people want a watch that negates the stigma of a disability. More or less, they want something cool.

"Often, people with disabilities may feel self-conscious about their challenges. Poorly designed and unappealing assistant devices are part of the problem," Chavez said in an information video. "Haptica not only solves existing functional issues with current Braille watches, but through design we believe it will engender a certain pride of ownership."

The interface consists of four groups of Braille dots and allows users to feel the time in military time format. A contoured surface creates an easily locatable channel where the time can be scanned with a finger. Each Braille dial rotates in or out of the channel according to the time.

And non-Braille literate people can easily learn to use the watch by memorizing numbers zero through 10 in Braille.

"With Haptica we hope to improve the quality of life for the blind through innovative and thoughtful design," Chavez said.

The Haptica watch can be found online at hapticatech.com, where there are updates regarding the watch's development.

e-mail: smoreton@desnews.com