Just a few years ago, independent online purchases were completely unavailable to the 23-year-old Chinese woman Li Manzi - she has been blind since birth. When smartphones appeared with the function of turning text to speech, she immediately bought an iPhone, even despite the high price - because other models are often simply not suitable for people with disabilities.

Today, the screens of many modern smartphones offer great opportunities for people with impaired vision, thanks to special applications. However, on the screen, besides valuable information, there is a lot of superfluous and that which requires a deeper explanation. Since digital readers do not decipher human thoughts, therefore, when Lee works with electronic commercial applications, he receives inaccurate, misleading descriptions that make it difficult to find the right product.

Over the past two years, Alibaba has invested more than $ 15 billion in a global initiative called Alibaba Damo Academy, which is conducting research to improve the interface of smartphones for the blind. The latest development in conjunction with the University of Xinhua - inexpensive (only $ 1) special plastic film for the screen.

It is almost imperceptible, but if you gently run your fingers over it, you can sense three vertically arranged buttons on the right and left. By clicking on each of them, a specific command is launched, for example, “back” or “confirm”.

Addition to the smartphone allows blind and visually impaired customers to make online purchases without assistance. Currently, the program works only with the two most popular Alibaba applications - Taobao online store and Alipay payment system. The film will be available to users in early 2019.

techcult.ru