iPhone for the Blind Through the Silicon Touch iPhone (Concept)

Designer Bruno Fosi has come up with a cool idea to make Apple's iPhone usable in the hands of the visually impaired. Yanko Design touts the idea as “brilliant,” pointing out to the benefits of functions like text to speech and moon type tactile feedback.

“As wonderful as the iPhone is, it leaves out anyone visually impaired,” says Yanko Design.

“This Silicon Touch iPhone case works in tandem with an app to allow special accessibility functions like text to speech and moon type tactile feedback. The case is engraved with modified bas-relief buttons, each corresponding to a modified home screen on the iPhone. None of the phone’s functions are compromised. Multi-touch and finger flick scrolling are all intact. BRILLIANT!”

A comment on Yanko Design's page reveals a sad truth about today's companies, and especially about electronic makers – that it's just not profitable to care. Eric thinks that it would be infinitely better to see the actual device created by Apple, not a concept sleeve that actually downgrades the device, so to speak.

“Don’t get me wrong cause I have an iPhone, but I feel like people want the iPhone to do everything,” Eric writes. “Apple did an extremely good job of creating this phone around the idea that it was to spoil us visually through what we can see on it, and therefore interact with through touch. This makes something designed for people who take advantage of sight, work somewhat for the blind also.”

However, In Eric's opinion, “the visually impaired would benefit more from a device designed to spoil the tactile lover, not the visual…,” he stresses. “I also love the fact though that Apple made a product versatile enough to accommodate unforeseen uses, should there be a demand for this,” Eric adds.

So, how do you feel about this? Do you think it would be too much fuss for Apple to develop, say, five percent of the devices with the visually impaired in mind?