Awareness can be sightless.
After 3 years of anticipation South Korean startup company Dot is finally due to release it’s sleek, minimalist and revolutionary smartwatch this month – the first smartwatch designed with visually impaired people in mind.
Although plans were already in place to make the Dot Watch the company has used Stevie Wonder’s Grammy Award speech from a few years ago as inspiration where he said that “We need to make every single thing accessible to every single person with a disability.”.
The watch itself boasts a smooth, futuristic white face, displaying four cells of six tiny moving components (the smart device's answer to braille bumps). Its clean lines and pared-down design appear to have taken inspiration from Apple's mantra of minimalism.
The watch marks the first time braille has been put into motion and integrated into an electronic device. Constructed to be inconspicuous, the watch utilises a patented DOT Active Braille technology which reduces size, weight and price by more than ten times compared to existing technologies that rely on piezo-electricity.
Also much like the Apple Watch, the Dot Watch can connect to a smartphone via Bluetooth, and receive information from apps like Whatsapp, Google Maps and Messenger. Users can also reply to texts and perform simple actions on the device using two buttons on the side of the watch face.
And the Dot Watch is just the start of Dot Incorporation’s plans to bring brings new possibilities and benefits of the networked digital age to the blind and visually impaired with a ‘Dot Mini’, an educational braille reader, and a Kindle-like ‘Dot Pad’ already in the pipeline for 2018.
The Dot Watch is now available to pre order here with the price expecting to be around the £240 mark.