IIT Kanpur develops touch-sensitive watch for the visually impaired

A professor and a research associate at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, (IIT-K) have developed a novel touch-sensitive watch for the use of visually impaired people to sense time accurately. The watch was developed by prof Siddhartha Panda and Vishwaraj Srivastava of IIT Kanpur.

About the watch

• The watch we have developed is a haptic watch with a tactile interface that makes it easy for visually impaired people to read the time easily.
• The watch has tactile hour indicators of different shapes that make it easy for visually impaired people to recognise them.
• The user has to touch and scan the touch-sensitive watch’s hour indicators and with the help of different vibration patterns, the watch communicates back the time information that is easily perceived by the user. This way, the person is able to read the time.