Hyungsoo Kim received the idea for his ‘Bradley’ timepiece when a blind student seated next to him during a class at MIT asked him for the time.
Kim said, “It’s 2013. We went to the moon almost 60 years ago, and there’s no good watch for the blind.”
Kim started a company, Eone Timepieces, to create solution.
They designed the ‘Bradley’, a tactile watch that uses ball bearings instead of hands to let you feel what time it is.
The ball bearings are connected to the watch movements beneath the watch face with magnets. The magnets allow the ball bearings to move back to the correct time after they are touched with a simple shake of the wrist.
According to Kim, the two types of watches available to blind people have drawbacks. Talking watches are often difficult to hear in noisy, outdoor locations, while disruptive and embarrassing in quiet environments like a theatre or classroom.
On the other hand, analog watches with removable covers break easily and are extremely expensive to repair.
The ‘Bradley’ allows the visually impaired to easily and conveniently tell the time.
For sighted users, the timepiece allows a unique and discrete way of checking the time, be it in business meeting or dark theatre.
The ‘Bradley’ can currently be crowdfunded on Kickstarter.
[via Boston.com and Kickstarter]