THATS vision is that in any corner of the world to be a blind man who sees pictures with a smartphone.
Just with a smartphone and a tactile sheet, anyone can see the world.
By learning assistance, through individual study, THATS will make schools accessible, streets feasible and museums available.
This is the solution for a mother who illustrates a storybook for her child, a grandparent who receives selfie photos from his grandchildren, a pupil who learns braille alone and for a teenager reading porn, yes it’s hard when your mom has to be over your shoulder and explain everything to you.
Simple, cheap, fast for something that you already have – THATS app
Dan PatzeltTHATS – the first free e-learning system for the visually impaired
Innovation in education – accessible solutions for individual studying
There are 39 million blind people all over the world who are facing daily their condition and the limits of the social and educational systems. For them, and especially for the 1.4 million blind children (who live mostly in developing countries), accessing education is a luxury. The Touch & Hear Assistive Teaching System is the most accesible answer.
Visually healthy individuals can’t even grasp these problems:
- Mass education don’t usually offer dedicated resources for the blind. Boarding schools keep them far away from their families.
- They need permanent assistance (from a teacher) in order to understand the images they explore
- In an hour of class, a teacher takes turns in offering real assistance to each student (mostly 5-10 minutes), because he has to explain to each of them personally what exactly they are exploring.
- There are a few study materials, usually just embossed images explained by a teacher.
- The products for special education are very expensive. Schools and families don’t usually afford the production of a big number of embossed images or permanently buying new devices.
With
- A mobile app, which allow them to study from anywhere, even from home (close to their loved ones)
- An e-learning system which correlates the embossed images with audio descriptions. This allows them to study independently, without the assistance of another person.
- The software solution allows for perpetual improvements without new aquisitions.
- An international community of editors will create all kind of study materials, images, texts and audio descriptions, on any topic and in any language.
For the first time, a blind person can easily visualize images, study and have fun!
Innovation in technology – a software solution to a hardware market
Special education for the blind means, at the present time, expensive hardware products, which involve shipment, maintenance and service.
THATS reinvents the educational system for this public with a software for any mobile device.
The blind can use the smartphone (or the tablet) they already have in order to install the THATS app.
They can print embossed images from the digital library at the printer they already have at home or at school.
The first free mobile app for the blind and the visually impaired
Any user will be able to download for FREE the mobile app.
At the same time, he will have FREE access to the digital library and to the online editor, which he can use to download, edit and upload various study materials.
The system will also offer encyclopedias, magazines, comics, films as premium content. These are done with a big production value (many pages, special materials, actors will voice characters, etc.) created at the highest standards by specialized editors.
So, in order to enjoy the benefits of the app, all a visually impaired person would need is:
- A smartphone (or a tablet) to install the app on
- Internet
- The tactile images from the library (with QR codes and visual anchors)
These are resources available to a great number of blind people, even in underdeveloped countries.
A solution born inside a community of blind people
Association for Urban Development started working with the visual impaired comunity in 2010 by holding workshops and by making seven museums accessible.
After creating plenty of visual content we realized we also need a lot of volunteers to describe these images live to the blind.
We looked after a software that could explain these images and so we ended up developing it. The blind comunity gave us great feedback and we started growing the idea in the system we are presenting to you now. It became an education, an orientation and an entertainment solutions: THATS!
A collaborative solution, improved by anyone
The digital library and the online editor will be accessible to any person, from anywhere in the world, who will want to help a visually impaired person with an image, a text or an audio recording.
Thanks to multiple translation the digital library will be avaible în multiple languages.
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After we lunch the system, you can become a member of the
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Give the blind and the visually impaired a better life
through access to knowledge and entertainment!