LevelStar Icon Mobile Manager for the Visually Impaired
The passenger to my left, a blind man, used one of these throughout the flight from Austin to LA. I got a sample of what he heard when he hadn’t yet fully connected his earbuds and the device intoned in rapid-fire Speak-n-Spell, reading though items of a navigation menu until the right one sounded.
From the Icon’s product site, I now know how the man might’ve been using the $1,400 Linux-powered device: as an organizer, a communicator (equipped with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi for email and web browsing), a media player (with 40GB of storage), a voice recorder/journal, a word processor or even a blog authoring tool(!).
But all of those features obviously paled in comparison to what was evidently the most crucial and exquisite: the one which enabled him to select from his library of classical music (by the rhythmically-driven motions of his left hand and the semi-audible yet unadulterated synchronous humming, I’m guessing mostly Beethoven).
To experience music is universally one of life’s greatest pleasures. To experience others experiencing music is a very close second. I love technology.
