Robotic White Cane for the Blind
The creation of a new robotic white cane for the blind community was funded by the National Institutes of Health’s National Eye Institute (NEI) and the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB). The white cane features a color 3D camera and an inertial measurement sensor to help the visually impaired navigate safely indoors.“Many people in the visually impaired community consider the white cane to be their best and most functional navigational tool, despite it being century-old technology,” said Cang Ye, Ph.D., lead author of the study and professor of computer science at the College of Engineering at the Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond. “For sighted people, technologies like GPS-based applications have revolutionized navigation. We’re interested in creating a device that closes many of the gaps in functionality for white cane users.”
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“NIH-funded modern “white cane” brings navigation assistance to the 21st century”
Glaucoma can cause irreversible vision loss and even blindness if the condition goes untreated. The eye disease affects 3 million Americans. It's essential to catch the signs of glaucoma early on. Doctors recommend getting an annual eye exam with an ophthalmologist if you are over the age of 40 or have a family history of glaucoma. Now there is a new app that can help patients spot the early signs of glaucoma.
Apple TV Plus' show "See" brings the world of blindness to life for viewers. What's more, there is a blind consultant working on "See" to help steer producers in the right direction regarding the authenticity of the Blind world. Joe Strechay teaches the actors about what it's like being blind and teaches them the mannerisms of people living with blindness. "See," starring Jason Momoa, is now in its second season.
Anastasia Pagonis began losing her vision at age 12 due to genetic retina disease and autoimmune retinopathy. Her doctor suggested that she might try swimming because she could no longer play soccer. Last week, the US blind athlete won gold at the Tokyo Paralympics in the 400m freestyle swim. On top of being a world-record-setting athlete, Pagonis uses social media to educate people about adaptive sports and the visually impaired community. Pagonis has one event left in the Paralympics, the 100m free on Friday, Sept. 3.
Artificial intelligence has been revolutionizing the field of medicine in the last decade. Now, AI is being used for an eye test that can predict a condition that can lead to blindness. The retinal imaging device is called Detection of Apoptosis in Retinal Cells (DARC). A new study showed that DARC could identify areas of the eye showing signs of geographic atrophy. GA is a common condition that can cause reduced vision and blindness. Professor Francesca Cordeiro, Chair and Professor of Ophthalmology at Imperial College London, said: 
Audio descriptions help blind and visually impaired people to experience the joy of Hollywood films. Visually impaired people can enjoy audio descriptions describing what is on the screen on major video-streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime.
Tomorrow, a group of blind and visually impaired people will achieve a remarkable feat. The Audio Information Network of Colorado (AINC) will lead the team of 10 to summit a 12,456-foot peak at Keystone in Arapahoe Basin. The blind and visually impaired hike will be done in partnership with No Barriers USA. The free event helps AINC reach its mission, “to empower individuals to be self-sufficient, connected to the community, and continuously learning.”
Several different navigation applications can help blind people. Those include AccessNow, AroundMe, Autour, and BlindSquare. However, not many can assist blind people in navigating indoor spaces. One Israeli start-up hopes to change that with the RightHear app. The application can help visually impaired users navigate through malls, hospitals, grocery stores, restaurants, museums, and universities. RightHear is available in 26 languages and is free for Android and iOS users.
Blind and partially sighted people can now benefit from a new accessible radio set designed for blind and partially sighted people. Created by the Royal National Institute of Blind People, the DAB+ and FM radio offers users easy-to-use tactile buttons and clear voice prompts. Blind people will also benefit from audible confirmations when buttons are pressed. What's more, the DAB+ and FM radio has a dual alarm with a snooze function, sleep timer, and supports USB, making it compatible with RNIB's Talking Book Service, giving users access to over 34,000 fiction and nonfiction books.
The Smithsonian Museum created an Open Access Challenge to help users explore online museum collections from the Smithsonian's Open Access collections. Seven teams were commissioned; the winning team included a group of Parsons Design and Technology alumni. The team, led by Zhizhen (Jerry) Tan, created ArtEcho, which will provide broader access for blind echolocation users to perceive the Smithsonian and other museums' 3D objects directly through sounds.
The Swiss sportswear brand On has produced films profiling gifted athletes and adventurers. The films show the human side of the athlete and delve into social issues. Some of you may have seen the two-year-old On film about Olympic gold medalist Nicola Spirig from Switzerland. In 2020, On covered a couple's epic mountaineering trek through a mix of stirring live-action and animation.
Blind workers were not covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which set standards for safety and pay. Historian Felicia Kornbluh explores the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) 's efforts to organize visually impaired people during the 1950s to fight for their rights.
The American Printing House for the Blind (APH) has a long history of helping the blind and visually impaired community. The non-profit's humble beginnings go back to 1854 when Morrison Heady, a blind Kentucky resident, started collecting donations in order to print a raised letter version of John Milton's Paradise Lost. Today the organization is dedicated to empowering blind and visually impaired people by identifying obstacles in blind students' education. APH provides innovative products, materials, and services that support visually impaired people throughout their lifetime.
Dr. Agatha Aboe has a mission: stop the world's leading infectious cause of blindness—trachoma. Untreated, trachoma can lead to permanent damage to the cornea, causing vision loss and blindness. Over the course of two decades, Dr. Aboe was instrumental in reversing and preventing trachoma in Ghana. 
Samantha Johnson is a bioengineering student at Northeastern. She created the Tactile ASL Translational User Mechanism (TATUM) – a robotic arm – to help deaf-blind people communicate without an interpreter. While deaf people can communicate using ASL visually, deaf-blind people need to touch the signs; this requires an interpreter to be present to sign what others are saying because most people don't know how to sign. In the future, TATUM could allow the deaf-blind community the ability to speak privately; this could be helpful in settings like doctor's offices.
The Royal National Institute of Blind People's (RNIB) Talking Books service offers the visually impaired thousands of audiobooks sent out to customers in CD or USB format or as digital downloads. The RNIB first launched the service in 1935. Now, Amazon provides blind people access to the RNIB Talking Books service via its virtual home assistant, Alexa. By asking "Alexa, open RNIB Talking Books," blind users will be able to choose from more than 30,000 audiobooks.
All guide dogs loyally serve their owners by helping them get around and avoid obstacles. However, one guide dog continued to serve his owner log after he could see clearly. In the 1970s, seven-year-old golden Labrador Abel gradually went blind but never let his blind owner know as Abel continued to lead the way across the city.
The Wichita Association for Blind Athletes helps visually impaired residents get socially and recreationally involved in their community. Co-founded by Ira Mills, WABA has found numerous ways to do that, including creating a beep baseball team, the only team of its kind in Kansas. Beep baseball involves all players, except the pitchers and catchers, being blindfolded and identifying the ball by its chirping sound. Mills has been coaching the Wichita Falcons for the last four years. This year is the second time the Falcons The Wichita Falcons are competing in their second National Beep Baseball Association World Series.
EnChroma, the creators of specialized glasses for color blindness, announced the results of a workforce survey highlighting the obstacles that tens of millions of workers with color blindness face every day. Surprisingly, nine of 10 participants in the study on color blindness stated that identifying colors plays a role in their job. What's more, 75 percent reported that color blindness slows them down at work, 65 percent have issues interpreting color-coded materials, and over 20 percent can't do tasks requiring accurate color identification.
A new induction stovetop for blind people uses voice commands and haptic feedback to make cooking safer and more accessible. Dorian Famin, a French industrial designer, created Ugo, a two-part induction stovetop, in order to help streamline work in the kitchen for the blind and vision loss community. Ugo recites step-by-step recipes to users to aid blind people's cooking experience. The Ugo stovetop also includes wide, easy-to-grip handles, ensuring safe carrying and boosting the stove's tactile attributes.
Becca Meyers, 26, was born with Usher syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that causes hearing and vision loss. Meyers is a six-time Paralympic medalist. She won three gold medals and a silver at the 2016 Rio Games, and a silver and bronze at London 2012. Meyers was expected to compete in next month's Tokyo Paralympics. However, the USOPC denied her request to have a personal care assistant (PCA) in Japan. As a result, the blind swimmer withdrew from the Paralympics.
A wearable vision device for blind people could help prevent collisions. A new study showed that people who have visual impairments could reduce their chance of collisions or falls by 37 percent due to wearing such devices. The study, led by vision rehabilitation researchers at Mass Eye and Ear, a member of Mass General Brigham, was published in JAMA Ophthalmology.
Living with vision loss or blindness is not easy, but blind people can overcome obstacles with help. Arturo Soto graduated high school this spring, despite having lost his vision in early 2020. Naturally, the sudden loss of vision left Soto feeling discouraged. What’s more, he began to withdraw from his friends and began isolating. However, Soto has a new lease on life thanks to his new guide dog Vangie.
Sight Tech Global is an event about AI and the future of accessibility for visually impaired and blind people. Accessibility for visually impaired and blind people is crucial to progress. The next event will take place December 1-2, 2021. At last year’s event, Apple and Microsoft announced a remarkable tool that could enhance the lives of blind people—“scene description.” The AI cloud-based technology could inform users as to what was located in the room they are in. The tool could serve as a set of eyes for those who have lost their vision.
Over the years, many people have ridden their bikes from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. However, it’s truly an impressive feat when the person riding the bike is living with a disability. We are all watching as one blind woman rides coast-to-coast this summer.
Hari Roberts lives an action-packed life; he’s been riding horses for ten years and is currently studying Equine Care and Management at Coleg Cambria. Roberts has been blind since birth, but the young man is not deterred by blindness.
Did you know that nearly 90% of the world’s blind live in low-income countries? What’s more, the leading cause of blindness in such countries is, more times than not, preventable. Blindness due to cataracts, for instance, is avoidable.
Edmund Edward Fournier d’Albe was an Irish writer, inventor, and physicist. On June 25, 1912, d’Albe demonstrated a new invention at the Optical Society Convention in London. He called the machine an “exploring optophone,” he contended that his creation helps blind people detect light or “hear” light instead.
Both men’s and women’s USA goalball teams punched their tickets for the the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games goalball in Tokyo. Goalball is a sport designed specifically for visually impaired athletes.
Read inspirational stories about some of history’s best blind and visually impaired athletes. They overcame physical and emotional challenges in addition to societal obstacles and lowered expectations.
Marla Runyan made history by becoming the first legally blind athlete ever to compete in the Olympic Games in Sydney in 2000. She made it to the finals, where she placed eighth in the 1,500 meters, the best finish by an American woman in that event. Beginning in 2001, she won three straight US national championships in the 5,000 meters.
Robert Parsons is an inspiration to blind and low vision communities. Parsons has earned two master's degrees from Western Michigan University. He has come a long way since 2014 when a traumatic brain injury left Parsons living with blindness.
One hundred and 40 years ago a stroll down the streets of Seoul (South Korea) would have been a surreal experience. You would rarely see a woman walking the streets most of the day. However, you may run into the fairer sex at night because men, with very few exceptions, were confined to their homes during a curfew hour.
The last year and a half has been extremely challenging. All of us were forwarded to ask hard questions about how we were going to survive in the midst of chaos. It was perhaps most challenging for those living with visual impairments. People living with blindness had to quickly adapt to life without access to many of the resources they once depended upon. The hats of the sighted community should go off to everyone living with a disability during these challenging times.
Helping blind people know when their food has gone bad is important to a company called Mimica. Soon blind people could have an easier way to discern if their food has spoiled because Mimica created touch-sensitive sensors to tell you how fresh your food is. The project started as a way to help blind people.
A team of researchers from several universities is working on a brain implant that could restore vision to blind people. If successful, blind people could get their sight back partially.
Winston Chen, a developer, designed an app for people with visual impairment while living in the Arctic Circle. His Voice Dream Reader won him the prestigious Apple Design Award. Voice Dream Reader supports text-to-speech as well as visual reading for blind people or those living with low vision and dyslexia.
New research suggests that blind people can benefit from receiving instruction on echolocation. What’s more, people with vision loss can learn echolocation with just a small amount of training. Click-based echolocation helps individuals judge spaces and improve their navigation skills.
Lawson Ung graduated from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s master of science program in epidemiology and he plans to return in the fall to begin a Ph.D. program. Ung is interested in the intersection between global poverty and blindness. Ung sees the relationship between eye injury, poverty, and loss of human potential as a call to action.
Visually impaired students are often discouraged from taking science courses because they’re considered too dangerous or too visual for blind people. Bryan Shaw, a biochemist and biophysicist at Baylor University, has devised an ingenious method for helping blind students study chemistry.
Michele Romeo of Sicily has been playing guitar since he was four years old. He was quickly identified as being a musical prodigy. Unfortunately, Romeo was diagnosed with a rare ocular disease at age 13, which would rob him of his sight one day and maybe his ability to shine musically. However, the Sicilian musician overcame his visual impairment and produced an album in 2012, garnering him critical acclaim in Sicily.
Scientists can now partially restore vision in some blind people thanks to a new treatment. A new gene therapy is helping blind people see, particularly those suffering from retinitis pigmentosa.
Sayali Apte was 23 years old when her life changed irreversibly. A terrible accident led to permanent blindness for the young entrepreneur. The loss of vision turned her life upside down and severely impacted her mental health. One day, Apte had an epiphany: she could not restore her sight, but she could choose to persevere. Adapting to life with blindness was a process.
Sighted people can easily take for granted that they have no problem deciding what to eat at a restaurant. Menus, after all, cater to people with healthy eyes. You might imagine that the same is not true for blind people and those living with vision loss.
More and more software companies are changing their platforms to make it easier for people with disabilities to take advantage of content and strengthen their web presence. Wix, an Israel-based software company, provides cloud-based web development services for those who do not have a background in web design. The Wix Accessibility Wizard scans a website to find potential issues for people with disabilities and impairments, such as individuals who are blind and use screen-reader technology, as well as those who are colorblind. DIY web design platforms can now make websites making more inclusive.
People living with mobility, vision, hearing, and cognitive disabilities can benefit from the latest software update from Apple. The company behind the sleek technological devices that we are all too familiar with believes that accessibility is a human right. iPad will support third-party eye-tracking hardware to make using the devices easier for blind and vision loss communities. Apple's VoiceOver screen reader will become more intelligent by using on-device intelligence to explore objects within images. This month, SignTime was launched, a tool that enables users to communicate with AppleCare and Retail Customer Care by using American Sign Language (ASL) in the US, British Sign Language (BSL) in the UK, or French Sign Language (LSF) in France.
Of late, the company behind the iconic doll known around the world as Barbie has been releasing a “Inspiring Women” line of dolls. The lineup includes: Eleanor Roosevelt, Dr. Maya Angelou, Billie Jean King, Ella Fitzgerald, Florence Nightingale, Susan B. Anthony, Amelia Earhart, Katherine Johnson, Frida Kahlo, Rosa Parks, and Sally Ride.
Every day, researchers work tirelessly to combat vision loss and blindness. Scores of studies are underway, all with the hope of restoring vision to blind people. One such research project, led by Dr. Matthew Griffith, of the Australian Centre for Microscopy & Microanalysis and the School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering, involves the printing of artificial retinas. The retina is the thin layer of tissue lining the back of the eye which receives light, converts it into neural signals, and sends the transmissions to the brain for processing.
Tomorrow is Global Accessibility Awareness Day, a time to encourage mobile providers to fully grasp the upside of designing products with inclusion and accessibility at the forefront. Technology must cater to the blind, deaf, and physically impaired community. It’s worth remembering that the typewriter, the predecessor of computer keyboards, was invented to help blind people type. Remote controls were designed to allow the physically impaired people access to television.
CRISPR is a gene-editing technique allowing scientists to make precise changes in DNA. The method has shown promise for blood disorders and is being tested for several forms of cancer. Researchers believe that CRISPR can help in fighting diseases and help people suffering from rare genetic disorders.
