A Blind iPhographer!

“A brain tumor caused professional photographer Alex Dejong to lose his eyesight three years ago. Dejong’s blindness is acute: He can only perceive light and dark.

Because Dejong could not see his own photographs, he hired an assistant for editing. Until recently, editing was a part of the creative workflow that he thought he’d lost forever. And then to his surprise, Apple’s iPhone 3GS, which launched late June, gave him back the ability to edit photos.

The new iPhone has a feature called VoiceOver, which reads back anything a user places his finger over on the screen: e-mail, web pages, system preferences and so on. Beyond that, photo-editing applications such as CameraBag and Tilt-Shift perform automated editing tasks that blind users like Dejong could not otherwise do on their own.

(A photo of a cup shot with the iPhone 3GS. Photo: Alex Dejong)

“With the iPhone and a lot of the photography apps that a lot of people are using, I have my entire workflow, and I can do it in five minutes,” Dejong said. “In this way, the iPhone is a remarkable gift. I’ve had it for three weeks now, and it has really opened up my world, apart from the photography.”

For years, technology companies and small software developers have created digital tools to aid the blind in everyday life. Microsoft Windows, Linux and the Mac operating system each carry tools such as audio screen readers and magnifiers to assist the visually impaired with computer use. And in the hardware arena, some gadgets, such as Dejong’s Nokia N82, specialize in helping the blind. The smartphone supports a vOICe app that analyzes the light detected by the handset’s camera and plays different sounds depending on the brightness, thereby helping the blind make pictures out of sounds”

EDIT - iPhography.com: This is definitely something that needs to be added to the iPhone. I think even sighted people could use it as a game & to increase their awareness of blindness & the difficulties involved

Found via:ironyislet
See Wired for full story