A watch for blind people

The watch has a stark, circular titanium face. There are no hands. There are no numbers. Around a groove in the centre a ball-bearing rotates to mark the minutes. Around the edge of the watch, another ball bearing rotates to tell the hours, BBC News reports. The Bradley was designed for the use of blind people, the latest in a long line of efforts to help those without sight efficiently tell the time. Designer Hyungsoo Kim was in a lecture hall at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in September 2011 when a neighbouring student asked him the time. "My classmate is visually impaired, and had been for 10 years," explains Kim. The student had a watch that could tell the time, but only by pressing a button that would make it speak out loud. Doing so in a classroom could be disruptive, so instead, says Kim, "I was his wristwatch." There are a number of timepieces for the blind, including the Meteor vibrating watch that uses a series of rumbles to denote hours and minutes. Tactile, or Braille watches, are popular in the blind and partially sighted community. They look similar to a normal watch, but the front glass can be flipped up, allowing the wearer to touch the hands and tell the time. "If you're blind you don't know if you've got up in the middle of the night," explains Leslie Duroe of RNIB, the UK's main charity for the blind and partially sighted. "It can make people feel very insecure to not know what time it is." For Kim, previous designs were more functional than beautiful. Sighted people choose their watches as much as a fashion statement as for merely telling the time. Many might assume that blind people care only about function. But that's wrong. There were also practical criticisms over existing watches for some users - in the case of tactile or Braille watches, foreign objects such as food could clog or affect the progress of the hands. Details also at