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	Stevie Wonder playing with VTPlayer in the A.T. KRATTER & Company exhibit booth at CSUN, March 2003. Stevie loved it and bought one on the spot.

Based on patented technology, VTPlayer™ creates an entirely new form of immersive experience for users. In the same way that 3D enables virtual reality, Dimension 3F™, the technology developed by VirTouch, allows users to "step into" specially developed software applications via three sensory channels: touch, motion and sound. The result is an unprecedented level of quality education and entertainment.Invented by a world-renowned psychologist and developed by a team of experts in assistive technology experts, VTPlayer looks deceptively like a simple computer mouse with some added buttons. In fact, it can be installed on almost any Windows-capable computer, including laptops, with plug-and-play ease. Novices can learn to use it just as quickly as skilled PC users.

The key to VTPlayer’s capabilities is its embedded tactile display. This delivers the images, animation and text of supported software applications to the user’s fingertips, along with accompanying sound effects built into the software. The display is made up of a pair of electronically-controlled matrix units built into the VTPlayer’s surface just where the fingers rest. Each 4x4 matrix holds 16 pin-like micro-pods that rise and fall dynamically, gently delivering a tactile sense of the screen to the user’s fingertips.

With applications focused on education and entertainment, VTPlayer addresses the needs of users with computer experience as well as those who are new to PCs.VTPlayer’s growing software library includes interactive games for teaching Braille, talking tactile maps that educate students in geography, and learning games that entertain while teaching valuable mental skills such as navigation, pre-mobility training and spatial orientation. And because it’s also suitable for players with unimpaired vision, VTPlayer does more than simply provide fun for blind and visually impaired people. It creates social interaction opportunities within families and beyond. And that means more meaningful shared experiences for everyone.

The VTPlayer Software Library
The library of VTPlayer-compliant interactive learning software and entertainment titles is growing fast. Check out these exciting offerings, all of them specially esignd to work with your VTPlayer

TactileMaps™ Series
The VTPlayer brings geography to life! By moving the VTPlayer over specially adapted on-screen maps, users feel the location and relationship of continents, oceans, seas, countries, states, islands, and selected other geographic elements. Tactile clues, textures,animations and contours are experienced through the fingertips. Clicking on the VTPlayer’s buttons causes the software to "speak" the location and give valuable background information. All TactileMaps titles include this Click-N-Hear™ feature. Several geographic zones currently in development.

Braille Adventure™ Series

Enter a chicken hatchery and learn Braille coding and decoding. Step into a virtual factory – and learn to recognize Braille as a stream of letters. Based on advanced research in Braille education, the Braille Adventure series of fully interactive games introduces users to the skills required to learn Braille. Beginners are guided through the process from pre-Braille to advanced skills. Braille concepts are introduced via drilling, repetition and level progression. Teachers can select individual games or use the complete system.

VTPlayer’s growing selection of cognitive games offers education and enrichment in fun and entertaining ways. The design of these games is based on maximizing the user’s potential for learning. Titles now in development include a tactile adaptation of Compedia’s award-winning Timmy’s Sea Adventures!

And because life is more than school and work, VTPlayer doubles as an entertainment console. Tactile adaptations of popular games, similar in concept to Doom® and Monopoly®, are in development. For the first time, high quality computer-based entertainment is available for persons who are blind and visually impaired.

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