Rakuten Technology Conference 2017

In recent years, smartphones have become so commonplace that it is easy to forget those who cannot take advantage of their convenience. Focusing on this problem, Dot Incorporation, a South Korean start-up, developed Dot Watch for the world’s approximately 285 million visually impaired people. This instantly garnered attention on a global scale.
Instead of a watch face with hands showing the time, the Dot Watch – a smartwatch for the visually impaired – uses a tactile display. A braille translation engine that was developed in-house enables the information to be displayed in braille in “tactile mode.” When connected to a smartphone via Bluetooth, text messages, chat messages, push notifications and other information can be read in braille on the watch. For this groundbreaking invention, Dot Incorporation placed first at both Get in the Ring 2016 and the Slush Tokyo 2017 pitch contest.
While devices that told the time or information through voice input and speech recognition had existed previously, they could only be used where there was no background noise. Through the use of the Dot Watch’s tactile display, visually impaired people can get information in noisy or silent settings without having to worry about their auditory environment. The Hands Prize is awarded to Dot Watch, that dramatically changed people’s lives, by making use of technology.