Project “Fenestra”
"Education through integration"
Microsoft Imagine Cup 2007. 1st place in Ukrainian final. Top 12 teams in the world.
This project allows people with visual disabilities to study together on equal terms with normally sighted people. To make people with visual disabilities equal to normal people in educational processes, Fenestra provides the following functionality: interaction with the computer using a fingertips reader, voice synthesis/recognition, a special browser for blind people, handwriting recognition and audio/video transmission for organizing classes which will consist of both visually disabled, as well as people with normal vision.
What differs Fenestra from other pojects for people with visual disabilities?
- Fenestra's target audience is both visually disabled people, as well as people with normal vision, which enables social integration.
- Fenestra uses very cheap fingerprint readers instead of expensive Braile devices.
- A successful combination of modern technologies makes Fenestra really usefull
An idea of using fingerprint readers to help visually disabled people to interact with computer is simple but very powerfull. Each human has unique fingerprints on every finger, therefore the system can easily recognize what finger was pressed. Fenestra dynamically assign each finger with corresponding action depending on the program context. And this enables visually disabled user easily interact with the program. It's even more usefull then hotkeys!
Execept of special fingerprints readers support, wich we called Touchvision, Fenestra has a lot of other functionality. It supports speech synthesis/recognition and handwriting recognition. Also it includes a special web browser for visually disabled people and an educative game "Fenestra Risk".
Fenestra Documents:
Fenesrea Videos:
Fenestra intro cartoon:
Click here to play the cartoon.
We want to thank Chervonyy Sobaka cartoon studio for their help with this cartoon.
Fenestra first presentation in Seoul, Korea. :)