Collaborate Disseminate
In some forms of blindness, certain parts of the eye still work but damage to light-sensitive cells disrupts vision. Now, researchers at a company called Nanoscope have used gene therapy to bypass damaged cells and restore some level of vision to mice … Continue reading Gene therapy restores partial vision to totally blind mice
Guide dogs play an important role as a mobility aid for the visually impaired, but they aren’t the perfect solution for everyone. Things like the cost, smaller living quarters or even allergies can mean that these canines aren’t suitable for many, but … Continue reading Mobility device for the blind works like a handheld robotic guide dog
For people who rely on Braille, reading displays and signs in public can be a challenge, but a new system could help make things easier. HaptiRead is a haptic feedback device that uses ultrasound pulses in precise patterns to reproduce Braille text in … Continue reading Ultrasound haptic system projects readable Braille into thin air
[Jakob Kilian] is working on a glove that he hopes will let the blind “see” their surroundings.
One of the most fascinating examples of the human brain’s plasticity is in its ability to map one sense to another. Some people, for example, report being able to see sound, giving them …read more
Continue reading Giving Sight to the Blind with A Wave of the Hand
If you have a serious visual impairment, using a computer isn’t easy. [Dhiraj] has a project that allows people fluent in Braille to use that language for input. In addition to having a set position for fingers, the device also reads the key pressed as you type. With some third …read more
Head-mounted displays range from cumbersome to glass-hole-ish. Smart watches have their niche, but they still take your eyes away from whatever you are doing, like driving. Voice assistants can read to you, but they require a speaker that everyone else in the car has to listen to, or a headset that blocks out important sound. Ignoring incoming messages is out of the question so the answer may be to use a different sense than vision. A joint project between Facebook Inc. and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have a solution which uses the somatosensory reception of your forearm.
A similar …read more
Signing up for college classes can be intimidating, from tuition, textbook requirements, to finding an engaging professor. Imagine signing up online, but you cannot use your monitor. We wager that roughly ninety-nine percent of the hackers reading this article have it displayed on a tablet, phone, or computer monitor. Conversely, “Only one percent of published books is available in Braille,” according to [Kristina Tsvetanova] who has created a hybrid tablet computer with a Braille display next to a touch-screen tablet running Android. The tablet accepts voice commands for launching apps, a feature baked right into Android. The idea came to …read more
On an anonymous site, a purported Lyft worker claimed that employees look up ride data on exes, actors, porn stars and Mark Zuckerberg. Continue reading Lyft investigates allegations of employees snooping on riders
Adventure travel can be pretty grueling, what with the exotic locations and potential for disaster that the typical tourist destinations don’t offer. One might find oneself dangling over a cliff for that near-death-experience selfie or ziplining through a rainforest canopy. All this is significantly complicated by being blind, of course, so a tool like this Raspberry Pi low-vision system would be a welcome addition to the nearly-blind adventurer’s well-worn rucksack.
[Dan] has had vision problems since childhood, but one look at his YouTube channel shows that he doesn’t let that slow him down. When [Dan] met [Ben] in Scotland, [Ben] …read more
Continue reading The ‘All-Seeing Pi’ Aids Low-Vision Adventurer
From tactile signing to a whole list of phone apps. Continue reading How Deaf People and Blind People Communicate With Each Other