Nanoflowers May Enable Blind People To See Again

The newest technological advance for macular degeneration sufferers:

Soon, a special nanoflower may help return the eyesight of people, like those suffering from macular degeneration.

Richard Taylor at the University of Oregon is leading an effort to design a fractal-based retinal implant that will give a new life to blind people.
He is on a quest to grow these special nanoflowers seeded from nano-sized particles of metals that grow or self assemble in a natural process, diffusion limited aggregation.
These will be fractals that mimic and communicate efficiently with neurons.
Taylor says that fractals are “a trademark building block of nature,” objects with irregular curves or shapes, of which any one component seen under magnification is also the same shape.
According to him, trees, clouds, rivers, galaxies, lungs and neurons are fractals. However, today”s commercial electronic chips are not fractals.
When eye surgeons would implant the fractal devices in the eyes of blind patients, interface circuitry happens that would collect light captured by the retina and guide it with almost 100 pc efficiency to neurons for relay to the optic nerve to process vision.
Taylor faces many challenges in his envisioned approach, most important being determining which metals can best go into body without toxicity problems.
“We”re right at the start of this amazing voyage. The ultimate thrill for me will be to go to a blind person and say, we”re developing a chip that one day will help you see again,” Taylor says.


http://news.bioscholar.com/2011/05/nanoflowers-may-enable-blind-people-to-see-again.html

For the Blind, Technology Does What a Guide Dog Can’t

Inspiration after shopping trip - Robot to help out blind shoppers:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4509403.stm

Independence with guide dogs and technology:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/business/04blind.html

Overview of best designs for the visually impaired:

Packaging for the Blind

Today I went on a field trip to my local supermarkets (Morrisons, Tesco, Waitrose and Sainsbury's) and I was surprised at how few 'blind friendly' products were actually available. Although the packaging of most medical products were imprinted with Braille, astonishingly NO other product had a feature like that.

When I asked a sales assistant why this was the case, he shockingly replied: "Well they are blind, so they don't go shopping anyway." - we need to change this stereotypical idea of 'because blind people can't see they can't do anything.' Because they still want their independence and they still need to eat and require beauty essentials, even though they might need some extra help. If the awareness of their needs was greater, than more products would be available. They represent a niche that isn't catered for yet.

World Sight Day - Sight Test

World Sight Day is a world wide event that aims to bring attention to blindness and vision impairment. It happens in the second week of October every year. Although it is not currently happening it inspired me to get my eyes tested (thankfully they alright and I don't even need reading glasses as of yet). The optician highlighted that with age people should get their eyes tested more regularly - at least every two years. He also warned that the incorrect lens strength can do more damage than good to the eyes, but also that it is natural for eyes to loose their 'seeing powers' with age.

It is clear that Glasses play a vital part to a lot of people's daily lives, whether they opt for traditional reading glasses or contact lenses. In my project I will be using glasses to illustrate, demonstrate and visualise the decline of sight and different stages of sight loss.
Here is brief time line of the development of reading glasses:

1. 1000 AD

   1000 AD - a well-worn pair of reading glasses over those who appear with. MacDailyNews features news, links, tips, and opinions. Earth911's Quick Vote poll asked readers to complete this statement: "The one thing Glasses date back as far as reading stones, made in Italy in 1000 AD. From The Seattle Computer Reader Reading Glasses styleglasses.healthserver.info/the-seattle ...

2. 1260

   1260 - While the origin of eyeglasses is relatively unknown and widely debated, reading glasses first appeared on the scene in Italy around 1260 CE They were initially designed to help the elderly in their quest for reading. The reading glasses were insanely popular ...While the origin of eyeglasses is relatively unknown and widely debated, reading glasses first appeared on the scene in Italy around 1260 CE They were initially designed to help the elderly in their quest for reading. The reading glasses were insanely popular very quickly but there was one drawback - arms had not been invented for the prescription eyeglasses and the frames kept slipping down the nose! The Spanish tried to remedy this by tying ribbons to the frames and then ... Show moreShow less From blog.first-wholesale.com - Related web pages blog.first-wholesale.com/

3. 1284

   1284 - Looking into the history of wholesale reading glasses we will find that even though the concept of glasses was present as far behind as the presence of the roman emperor Nero, in was in 1284 in Italy that Salvino D' Armate came up with the first wearable eye ...Wholesale reading glasses also help protect the eyes from the harmful computer radiation as well as harmful ultraviolet radiation when you are reading in sunlight. Looking into the history of wholesale reading glasses we will find that even though the concept of glasses was present as far behind as the presence of the roman emperor Nero, in was in 1284 in Italy that Salvino D' Armate came up with the first wearable eye glass, which ... More About: Reading , Make , Pleasure ... Show moreShow less From Wholesale Sunglasses blog - Blog Toplist - Related web pages 96.30.19.33/shopping-fashion/blogdetails-1937 ...

4. 1891

   Feb 19, 1891 - as to the rate and amount of duties chargeable on certain chains, opera glasses, opera-glass cases, and reading glasses, imported per Oascogne, February 19,1891. Opinion by Tiohenor, General Appraiser. The merchandise to which this protest relates is desoribed ...In the matter of the protest, 03776, of Otto Youhg & Co., against the decision of the collector of customs at Chicago, 111., as to the rate and amount of duties chargeable on certain chains, opera glasses, opera-glass cases, and reading glasses, imported per Oascogne, February 19,1891. Opinion by Tiohenor, General Appraiser. The merchandise to which this protest relates is desoribed by the appraiser. Show moreShow less From United States Congressional serial set - Related web pages books.google.com/books?id=24o3AQAAIAAJ&pg=RA4 ...

5. 1906

   Apr 23, 1906 - Mrs. P., age 50, seen April 23, 1906. She complained of some blurring before the right eye in distant vision, which at times was worse. Duration of symptom was several weeks. Near vision was undisturbed with reading glasses, her distant vision, however ...Case VII is one of interest to the ophthalmologist on account of the family history. Mrs. P., age 50, seen April 23, 1906. She complained of some blurring before the right eye in distant vision, which at times was worse. Duration of symptom was several weeks. Near vision was undisturbed with reading glasses, her distant vision, however, remained slightly indistinct even with correction. The vision OD with +2 DS was normal. Personal history was negative. Show moreShow less From Annals of ophthalmology - Related web pages books.google.com/books?id=ffgAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA67 ...

6. 1994

   1994 - We offer trading services for all kinds of eyewear, including sunglasses, reading glasses and optical glasses. Established in 1994, we sell more than US$7 million worth of Ben-Ny Industries goods annually. Our engineers use auto-CAD to design your glasses.We offer trading services for all kinds of eyewear, including sunglasses, reading glasses and optical glasses. Established in 1994, we sell more than US$7 million worth of Ben-Ny Industries goods annually. Our engineers use auto-CAD to design your glasses. You can also choose from any of the 50 to 60 new items that are available each month. More than 20 R&D staff are working to handle your projects. A decade of working with overseas buyers on custom projects means that ... Show moreShow less From List of Buyer Companies in China(Page 30) - Related web pages mt.list-of-companies.org/China/Keywords/Buyer ...

7. 1996

   May 1996 - Clinton's eyesight, aided by reading glasses, was unchanged from his last physical in May 1996. Clinton has been complaining for years about his hearing. On Friday, doctors at Bethesda Naval Hospital decided his hearing was damaged enough for him to be fitted ...Clinton's eyesight, aided by reading glasses, was unchanged from his last physical in May 1996. Clinton has been complaining for years about his hearing. On Friday, doctors at Bethesda Naval Hospital decided his hearing was damaged enough for him to be fitted with hearing aids in both ears. For what doctors termed a high-frequency hearing loss, Clinton was fitted for the type of hearing aid that can be easily placed fully inside his hearing canal, hardly noticeable to other ... Show moreShow less From Clinton healthy but needs hearing aids - Related web pages pqasb.pqarchiver.com/sptimes/access/16862926 ...

8. 2003

   2003 - I had laser surgery in 2003. I could not see anything without glasses before my surgery. I still have 20/20 vision, but was told that due to the natural aging of my eyes I would probably need reading glasses around 40. Available Services Upcoming. From How long does laser eye surgery last for? - Related web pages wave-lasik.com/how-long-does-laser-eye-surgery ...

9. 2004

   Mar 2004 - In March 2004, they were contracted by Scojo Foundation (now VisionSpring) to work in El Salvador to help them find an effective way to distribute reading glasses to low income villagers. It is estimated that over 90 percent of people over 40 years old will ...Upon finishing their Peace Corps responsibilities, Greg and George stayed in Guatemala and formed New Development Solutions as a means to provide consulting services to USAID, Chemonics, Soros Foundation and the like. In March 2004, they were contracted by Scojo Foundation (now VisionSpring) to work in El Salvador to help them find an effective way to distribute reading glasses to low income villagers. It is estimated that over 90 percent of people over 40 years old ... Show moreShow less From MicroConsignment - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - Related web pages en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroConsignment

10. 2010

    Oct 25, 2010 - ewtewt posted on 10/25/2010 @ 1:07:42 am. As the fast development of eyewear industry, there are different kinds of glasses catering for various needs and flavors. People have their choices when they want to wear glasses as fashion accessories. Online cheap ...ewtewt posted on 10/25/2010 @ 1:07:42 am. As the fast development of eyewear industry, there are different kinds of glasses catering for various needs and flavors. People have their choices when they want to wear glasses as fashion accessories. Online cheap eyeglasses enable customers to save great expense. Firmoo.com is the right place for you to buy eyeglasses and sunglasses, for there is a huge variety for your choice, like cheap eyeglass frames，plastic glasses ... Show moreShow less From Madison Drink Specials - Blog - Tom Wilson - Related web pages tommwilson.com/blog/madison-drink-specials.php

Some early reading glasses/devices:

                                                                      Medieval Reading Stone

                                                              Tommaso di Modena Painting, 14th C.

                                                                 Eyeglasses, circa 18th centuy 


Today's Reading Glasses:

Various Sight Test Steps:

                                                          

A brief history of contact lenses:

1508   Leonardo da Vinci illustrates the concept of contact lenses
1823   British astronomer Sir John Herschel conceptualizes practical lens design
1887   First contact lens manufactured from glass, and fitted to cover the entire eye
1939   Contact lenses first made from plastic
1948   Plastic contact lenses designed to cover only the eye's cornea
1971   Introduction of soft contact lenses
1978   Introduction of GP contact lenses
1981   FDA approval of new soft contact lenses for extended (overnight) wear
1986   Overnight wear of GP contact lenses becomes available
1987   Introduction of disposable soft contact lenses
1987   GP contacts available in next-generation fluorosilicone acrylate materials
1996   Introduction of one-day disposable soft lenses
2002   Silicone-hydrogel contact lenses first marketed
2002   Overnight orthokeratology approved by FDA
2010   Custom-manufactured silicone-hydrogel lenses become available


(http://www.contactlenses.org/timeline.htm)

Rainbows and Colour Blind People

How Do Colorblind People See The Rainbow?

Imagine not being able to see the world in its true color. The breathtaking beauty of nature and its colors as seen by the eye is appreciated by all those who love to the luminous world. But there are many who cannot see the exciting coloring of nature. Such people are known as being color blind and their state is the result of the inability of the eye to see and differentiate between different colors.

Is it really possible that somebody can’t see a red rose, the sunset or a rainbow because of color blindness? I’m sure they see the rainbow spread out in the sky just the same as others– but what they don’t see are its seven colors.
Here’s how people with partial color blindness (Tritanopia, Protanopia and Deuteranopia) see the rainbow:

Image Credits

People who are completely color blind would see the rainbow in shades of gray – and perhaps they would see everything as either black, white, or a shade gray.

http://www.didyouwonder.com/how-do-colorblind-see-the-rainbow/

Macular and Myopic Degeneration

This is how the world to someone with Macular Degeneration:

What is Macular Degeneration?

Age related macular degeneration is a medical condition which usually affects older adults that results in a loss of vision in the center of the visual field (the macula) because of damage to the retina.

My research has shown that this is a very common condition that could potentially affect every older adult world wide. Although it is so common, not a lot of people have heard of it until they experience it. Therefore I will aim a vast proportion of my project towards this condition. It also shows that the definition of 'blind' can't be thrown in one pot, as each individual experiences different stages and forms.

What is Myopic Degeneration?

Degeneration of the retina due to high short-sightedness. (

Case Study - Artist with Myopic Degeneration:
http://www.kathleenkridler.com/BootGal/BIO.html

Designing for People with Partial Sight and Color Deficiencies

Guide to how to make your website suitable for the visually impaired:
http://www.furydesignconsultants.com/work/website_design/blog/is-your-site%20visually-impaired-friendly/index.html

The end of typography: slow death by defaulthttp://www.eyemagazine.com/opinion.php?id=103&oid=255

Designers for disabled viewers:
http://www.mindmind.com/

The final Images from my project are based on accurate perceptions of the graphs below.

How does impaired vision affect color perception?

Partial sight, aging and congenital color deficits all produce changes in perception that reduce the visual effectiveness of certain color combinations. Two colors that contrast sharply to someone with normal vision may be far less distinguishable to someone with a visual disorder. It is important to appreciate that it is the contrast of colors one against another that makes them more or less discernible rather than the individual colors themselves. Here are three simple rules for making effective color choices:
1. Exaggerate lightness differences between foreground and background colors, and avoid using colors of similar lightness adjacent to one another, even if they differ in saturation or hue.
Dont assume that the lightness you perceive will be the same as the lightness perceived by people with color deficits. You can generally assume that they will see less contrast between colors than you will. If you lighten the light colors and darken the dark colors in your design, you will increase its visual accessibility.
2. Choose dark colors with hues from the bottom half of this hue circle against light colors from the top half of the circle. Avoid contrasting light colors from the bottom half against dark colors from the top half. The orientation of this hue circle was chosen to illustrate this point.
For most people with partial sight and/or congenital color deficiencies, the lightness values of colors in the bottom half of the hue circle tend to be reduced.
3. Avoid contrasting hues from adjacent parts of the hue circle, especially if the colors do not contrast sharply in lightness.
Color deficiencies associated with partial sight and congenital deficiencies make it difficult to discriminate between colors of similar hue.
Hue, Lightness and Saturation
The three perceptual attributes of color that can be envisioned as a solid.
Hue varies around the solid; lightness varies from top to bottom, and saturation is the distance from the center.
Hue is the perceptual attribute associated with elementary color names.
Hue enables us to identify basic color catagories such as blue, green, yellow, red and purple. People with normal color vision report that hues follow a natural sequence based on their similarity to one another. With most color deficits, the ability to discriminate between colors on the basis of hue is diminished.
Lightness corresponds to how much light appears to be reflected from a colored surface in relation to nearby surfaces.
Lightness, like hue, is a perceptual attribute that cannot be computed from physical measurements alone. It is the most important attribute in making contrast more effective.
With color deficits, the ability to discriminate colors on the basis of lightness is reduced.
To a person with color-deficient partial sight, the left-hand panel might appear like the right-hand panel appears to a person with normal color vision.
With color deficits, the ability to discriminate colors on the basis of all three attributes -- hue, lightness and saturation -- is reduced. Designers can help to compensate for these deficits by making colors differ more dramatically in all three attributes.
Aries Arditi, PhD, is Senior Fellow in Vision Science, Lighthouse International; this brochure is based on his earlier work with Kenneth Knoblauch.

Article Copyright: http://www.lighthouse.org/accessibility/design/accessible-print-design/effective-color-contrast

Never Forget...

... not only humans can be blind, animals need our help too:

Pawan Sinha on How Brains Learn to See

 

Powerful Lecture. If you would like to learn more about the Prakash project and how it helps children, have a look here : http://web.mit.edu/bcs/sinha/prakash.html

Communication Barriers

A nude is covered with Braille inscriptions at a contemporary art show in Nanjing, China, by Cheng Yong, an artist interested in communication barriers. His early paintings featured the sign language of the deaf.

Braille Tattoos

Same as previous post. How cool would it be if this became the norm, an alternative to normal tattoos. A lot of people choose to get tattoos in various different languages, so why not in Braille?

 

Braille City

 A typography animation inspired by Braille writing. If explored and developed further, this would form a fantastic basic to bring the idea of braille to the passes. If a viral for braille would become popular, it would inspire more people to learn braille and ultimately the demand for braille publications would rise and visually impaired people would feel more included into society:

Do blind people see in their dreams?

Do blind people see in their dreams? If so, what and how?

Today I had the pleasure of meeting Jack, a 60 year old pensioner, who lost his ability to see due to old age 2 years ago. He explained that his dreams still feel 'very much alive,' that he could still 'see' thanks to his dreams but that with every year that passes the memory of the colours fade and that objects are only represented the way he remembered them. He also says he never used to be able to remember his dreams, but he remembers them clearly now. Jack can also still visualise objects when awake and draw them from memory.
I found further answer in this forum:
http://www.afb.org/message_board_replies.asp?topicid=638&folderid=3

This study:
http://psych.ucsc.edu/dreams/Library/kerr_2004.html

After reading those articles, what do you think?

Inspiring article for this Project: How Blind People See the Internet

How blind people see the Internet

Sam Spratt / Gizmodo

By John Herrman
Gizmodo
Your eyes are absorbing this Web page. They're passing over this, this, then this word, right now. That's how reading works, online: You take this for granted. But what if you couldn't?
We grant our gaze to electronic screens for most of the day, and in return, they give us anything we want. We stare; they glow. We rarely speak, and neither do they.
And this makes sense! The Internet is a boundless collection of text, images and video, channeled to flat pieces of glass and plastic, beamed through lens, retina and nerve, all the way into our brains. It can show us anything, and for most Web users, that's exactly what it does.
But for millions of others — those who are unable to see — the Web is a wildly different place. Characters become sounds. Layouts are meaningless. Images are, at best, words and, at worst, blank spaces. And yet the blind browse the same Internet as everyone else, every day. They use the same gadgets the sighted do, and happily. But how?
The sightless InternetThe most common way for the vision-impaired user to access the Internet is with a traditional browser and text-to-speech software. You're probably already vaguely familiar with some of it — Windows users will have come across Microsoft Narrator, and I defy you to find a single Mac OS user who hasn't forced VoiceOver to hurl insults at his friends. These are the tools — or tools like these — that millions of people depend on to access the Internet.

But to say that blind users just "hear" the Internet is a gross oversimplification. It's not just text and images that blind users miss, it's virtually every part of the fundamental browsing experience.

Millions of people depend on tools such as the Mac OS X VoiceOver to access the Internet.

Here, try this: Stop reading for a moment. Lean back and survey this page. Now think about what you do when you visit a news site. Your eyes are probably drawn to the stories listed across the top of the page. They look important, right? Why else would they be up there? Further down you'll see the site's banner, but you probably don't spend much time looking at that, and your eyes dart to the list of stories in the middle of the page. You scroll down, glancing at pictures then headlines, or perhaps headlines then pictures. The margins of the site are either full of ads or static information, so you probably don't pay them much mind.
Your habits aren't just sight-dependent (obviously), they're pretty weird. Your eyes fly around, sometimes randomly and sometimes in response to cues onscreen. You hunt for links and cherry-pick from galleries. The word you're looking for catches your eye, so you click it. Consciously or subconsciously, you usually know where to look.
With a screen reader, there is no "looking." It's a simple parser, and it starts at the top. It combs through a website a lot like a Web browser combs through HTML, except instead of rendering an IMG tag as an image, or an EM tag as italicized text, it converts them to sounds: a readout of the image description — the alt text — and a changed audio inflection, respectively.
Then, of course, there's all that text. On a visually rendered Web page, it lives in blocks and columns. If you're lucky, these blocks and columns will be organized in a logical or familiar way. They'll be laid out, basically. But that's such a visual concept. What happens when a layout becomes words?
"Screen-reading software presents the Web page as a set of lines and links, and possibly other things — frames and headers, if the software employs that." That's Paul Schroeder, vice president of Programs and Policy for the American Foundation for the Blind.
Vision-impaired himself, he uses screen reading software for daily browsing. "When you log onto a website using screen-reading software, what you start with is a site that tells you how many lines, and some basic structure — but not very much. When you're experiencing a cluttered site, the information you want may be 300-400 lines in, and if you're going line by line, or section by section, it can take you a very long time to find what you want."
Think about that: The Internet is anything but linear—website code is nested and cryptic, and often looks jumbled and out of order. (Right click, view source! Oh, yikes, maybe don't.) Websites often have multiple visual directions, or sometimes none at all. Yet audio screen readers — and Braille modules, which display about one line of text at a time — have to render them in sequence, somehow. And listeners have to make sense of it, to develop some kind of intuition for a site's layout and structure based on very, very small amounts of information, all out of order.

The SyncBraille is touted as one of the smallest, lightest and most affordable ortable Braille displays in the world.

Of course, there are tricks. Screen reading software, like VoiceOver in OS X or JAWS for Windows, is more clever than I've made it sound. It parses websites for headers, and sometimes navigational elements. It can give you a literal description of a page's layout — "three columns, two rows" — and its surprisingly unrobotic voices reflect all kinds of punctuation. It even differentiates between outwardly identical tags. My editor actually just sent us an email to this effect: Stop using < EM > and < I > tags interchangeably. One is for italics, and one is for emphasis. It's a difference you can't see, but it's a difference some will hear.
These are the small features that make spoken Web pages usable, but they can't be taken for granted: People who design websites have to be vigilant about including headers to divide large blocks of text, to include alternative text for images, and to use their tags properly. Problem is, a whole ton of sites often don't. Ever had — or overheard — a tedious argument about whether or not a site is "standards compliant", as in W3C, HTML compliant? Well, this is like that. Actually, this is that. The W3C defines standards for accessibility just like they define standards for the rest of the Web. But like those other standards, they're often disregarded.
And even a totally compliant website can be overly complicated, or simply too liquid. "Facebook is a good example, because it's an ever-changing environment," says Schroeder. "Some users master particular aspects of Facebook, find that the programming has changed, and have to rethink their strategy."
But again, there are tricks: "Vision-impaired users who frequent Facebook and similar sites do one of two things: They either use the mobile version of the site, which is less cluttered, or they simply engage the specific thing they want to do and remember the specific things they want."

This is the VoiceOver menu for the iPad.

Properly coded websites, intelligent software and handy shortcuts and tricks mesh together to make browsing the Web tolerable for the vision impaired. Skills and persistence play a large part too. Schroeder tells me that in some cases, blind users can hop through site headers and run searches so quickly that they may be more efficient than sighted users in some situations.
But pending legislation could leave us with a much broader interpretation of the American With Disabilities Act, which could mandate certain commercial websites to do those little things that make screen-reading easier. But it's a constant struggle, with technologies often outpacing the tools necessary to parse them. Oh, and I almost forgot, the Web is dead. Or something.
Gadgets and appsIn case you missed the Wired cover story entitled "The Web Is Dead," here it is. The gist, to brutally oversimplify the piece, is that the Web as we know it, this familiar hodgepodge of websites rendered in browsers — you know, the W3C's standards-based Web — is falling out of vogue, making way for the new Internet: the internet of apps.
I don't totally buy it, but that's not the point. Apps are everywhere, and so are the devices that run them. I read as much on my mobile devices as I do on my laptop, if not more. So if the future runs on an iPad, what does that mean for the guy who can't see?
It's really a two-part question, so let's start with the fun half. The rise of the touchscreen gadgets, flat, featureless panels they are, is actually great news for blind folks. Let me put that another way: If you're unable to see, the iPhone, with its virtual buttons and complete lack of tactile feedback, is actually easier to use than, say, a BlackBerry, with its dozens of buttons. Weird! Well, not really.
Part of the story here is software. iPhones (and now Android phones) have sophisticated text-to-speech functionality, without which they'd be useless to the vision-impaired. BlackBerry phones, on the other hand, basically don't.
But even if RIM released an update to all their button-based phones giving them flawless screen-reading abilities, they couldn't measure up to a touchscreen device.
When you use a BlackBerry (or a Mac, or a PC) your sense of place is defined by sight. You move with a cursor, or a highlighted menu item. Then you click. And for the same reason Web layouts aren't very helpful to a blind person, the cursor paradigm — hell, the whole button-input paradigm — sucks. With a touchscreen, though, your fingers provide your sense of place. iPhone users can turn on the VoiceOver function, tap anywhere, and hear a narration of what's happening. Tap the upper left section of your screen, right near the volume switches, and a voice might read, "Camera app." Tap the bottom left, and you'll hear "Phone." With buttons, mice and keyboards, you're stuck back in that slow, linear screen-reading world. With touchscreens, a screen, and a piece of software, can actually be surveyed. Memorized. Used.
So that's pretty neat. But it's a rosy take. Asked about smart phones, Schroeder painted a glum picture: Apple and Google may be doing this stuff right, and building solid text-to-speech into their operating systems, but other companies are lagging. And anyway, text-to-speech in an OS is great, but today's smartphones are all about apps, developed by thousands of people in thousands of configurations. On the iPhone, for example, some apps work perfectly with VoiceOver. Plenty more don't.
Messy as it is, the capital "W" Web seems to be inching closer to universal accessibility. It has a guidebook, at minimum. But all these apps, and all their stores, may be setting progress back a few years. Suddenly, blind users' experience is at the mercy of each individual app developer, or with any luck, companies that provide their tools, and grant them access to their app stores. It's not an insurmountable problem, but it's a problem.
In any case, whether you're an app developer, Web designer or just a dude who likes to update his blog every once in a while, remember that someone, somewhere, might be listening to what you've written. And that alt texts in images aren't just for jokes. And that it's still OK to force your computer to recite profanities to you friends, for kicks.


Published via:
http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/04/01/6390761-how-blind-people-see-the-internet

How do blind people see?

Various studies have shown that people who are born blind or developed blindness after having been able to see previously, usually 'see' or rather experience a form of blackness or 'nothingness'. This could either be the colour black itself, or a very blurred dark gray. Although they can't put it in context. They can also experience bursts of light.

However, always advancing technology has enabled some blind people to see with their mouth/tongue. Here is a video outlining how the device works and how it will benefit people in the future.

Implants might also help:
Retinal implant trial helps blind people see shapes - World - Video - 3 News

Furthermore this article suggests that the findings of a study shows that some blind people can partially 'see' with their ears:
http://www.kurzweilai.net/some-blind-people-see-spatially-with-their-ears

Yet another article discusses a study suggesting blind people can see during a near death experience:
http://www.near-death.com/experiences/evidence03.html

However, one vital question remains: HOW DO WE MAKE PEOPLE WITH THE ABILITY TO SEE VISUALLY AWARE OF HOW BLIND PEOPLE SEE IN ORDER TO UNDERSTAND?

Campaigns

The following links show campaigns aimed to raise awareness for blind people. However they lack visual identities or graphics. Something which I am aiming to change. Furthermore this might be the reason, why they are less known:

Energy providers sponsor guide dogs:
http://www.energyhelpline.com/news1/fri/domesticenergy/news/article/19780401

Various teams getting together to raise money in the Newcastle area:
http://www.newcastle.gov.uk/core.nsf/a/wr_dandbcamps

Interesting campaign against Human trafficking with powerful images, which could also be used for blind awareness:
http://www.blueblindfold.co.uk/news/

This academy teaches its pupils about being blind by experiencing it first hand  - a fun way to learn about something so serious:

Campaign to help blind women in deprived areas:
http://allafrica.com/stories/201103020075.html

Inspiring Stories

Moving real life and some informative stories that evoked my curiosity for this subject, made me realize how little the general public really knows and inspired me to raise awareness.

http://www.birminghammail.net/news/your-news/2008/03/06/blind-dave-heeley-to-run-london-as-part-of-his-marathon-challenge-97319-20568944/ 

http://www.braillebrands.com/media.html

http://www.chickybus.com/2010/12/dialog-in-the-dark-blind-awareness/

http://optimistworld.com/PhotoVoice-Sensory-photography-enables-blind-visually-impaired-take-pictures/

http://blindflaneur.com/?page_id=398

Colour Blind

Images taken from everyday scenarios to visualize how Colour Blind people see the world:

Traffic Light with distinct shapes that would enable Colour Blind individuals to drive:

Read about different types of colour blindness here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_blindness

Colour Blindness cured:
http://www.colourlovers.com/blog/2009/09/18/color-blindness-cured

Graphic Designer with Colour Blindness:
http://www.brandon-hall.com/workplacelearningtoday/?p=13478

Product to help people with Colour Blindness:
http://medgadget.com/archives/2008/05/the_brightf_translation_system_for_color_blind.html
Worried you might be Colour Blind? Take a quick test here (but remember, if in doubt ask your doctor):
http://www.maniacworld.com/color_blind_test.htm