A few grams of autonomy

details

Production
2009, France
Original language
French
Running time
00:26:00
Genre
documentary
Topic
medicine
Directed by
Philippe Dorison
Written by
Philippe Dorison
Produced by
bleu Krystal media, avec la participation de France 5
Member page
bleu Krystal media

The film proposes to introduce a variety of recent technical aids, used by the visually impaired to facilitate their everyday life, their access to culture and their employability. In this exploration of assistive technology in the service of visual impairment, we will be guided by Fernando Pinto da Silva, who directs the Center for Assessment and Research on Technologies for the Blind and Visually Impaired (CERTAM) established by the Association Valentin Haüy.

We also meet Aziz Zogaghi, who works at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in the development of electronic canes, Stephen Hague, computer trainer at the National Institute for Blind Youth (INJA), and Florence Chicken-Daumas , winner of the Concours Lépine 2009, for the invention system Easymétro. In many cases, these devices have the characteristic to talk and they have benefited greatly from recent developments of speech synthesis tools, which are themselves supported on the progress of computing. More and more applications can be integrated into a mobile phone and can read documents on paper, recorded books, to navigate through GPS or receive emails.
But parallel to this trend of all-in-one is also emerging in many products that fulfill only one function. This is the case of housing Easymétro which addresses a larger clientele than only visually impaired people. It is as such representative of a trend that we observe today: some consumer devices, such as a GPS for pedestrians, are designed from the outset to be used without a screen. This obviously allows the blind or visually impaired to take ownership immediately.