one-handed optacon
- From: dg140@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Charles Pond)
- To: optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 09 Jul 2006 08:16:51 -0400 (EDT)
Some observations about a one-handed optacon from someone on a different
list. This sprung from the camera that talks stuff.
[quoted lines by dg140@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx on 2006/07/07 at 15:39 -0400]
>Is it necessary for cognitive reasons for the optacon to have been
>two-handed, or was that an artifact of yesteryaar's technology?
I think it's an artifact of the technology having been much older. If you
add
up the weights and the sizes of the tactile array and battery, you'd have
had
something which would've been way too heavy and big for ease of use and
motion
with a single hand over a long period of time. I got my optacon back in the
mid
'70s, so the technology is 30 to 35 years old.
>With the optacon as you know, the camera is generally moved from
>left to right (with some exceptions). The tactile image moves under the
>reading finger on the opposite hand from right to left. Kinaesthetically,
>it would seem to be the same for a one-handed optacon. Would this pose a
>problem, or is the strange feeling of inner-vertigo I have when I imagine
>using a one-handed optacon an indication that there is an intrinsic need
>for a two-handed model?
No, I don't think so. When I read braille I move my hand from left to right
and
the dots pass under my finger (on the same hand) from right to left. When
sighted people read they move their eyes from left to right and the image
passes those same eyes from right to left. That's the way everything
works and I think we'd find it completely strange to have it any otehr
way.
I think a single-handed optacon-like device would have another advantage.
The optacon camera had a pair of rollers which forced the user to move
the camera in a straight line. This was necessary because of the
difficulty of maintaining the correct vertical position when the
feedback was coming from the other hand.
I don't think a single-handed device would need this as it'd be much more
like directly feeling the lines. A bit of vertical jitter wouldn't
matter at all since the hand being used would directly know what it
itself is doing. This, for example, would sure make reading graphs easier.
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