Dyslexia: An Introduction to BookShare

Do you have a print disability? Do you live in the US or UK?

With a Bookshare membership, you can access over 93,000 accessible eBooks.

Bookshare, the world’s largest online library for individuals with print disabilities, offers a wide range of books including bestsellers, novels, children's books, mysteries, science fiction, nonfiction, foreign-language books, and more, direct from publishers.

Who may join?
Anyone with a qualifying print disability, such as blindness or low vision, a physical disability that prevents using a physical book, or a learning disability that affects reading, like severe dyslexia, may join Bookshare.

Organisations such as schools may also join Bookshare to serve and support their students or clients with print disabilities.

Life-threatening disease in Children: Danish researchers expose new cause and understanding

Lars Allan Larsen

Danish researchers have just published findings that explain a previously unknown mechanism used by cells to communicate with one another.

The research significantly contributes to understanding why some children are born with malformations and why children and adults may develop life-threatening diseases.

Søren Tvorup Christensen

Dr. Søren Tvorup Christensen (Department of Biology) and Professor Lars Allan Larsen (Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine) at the University of Copenhagen, in collaboration with colleagues in Denmark and France, have spearheaded the recent discovery which sheds new light on the causes of a range of debilitating diseases and birth defects.

Antennae-like structures on the surface of cells
Over the years, the research group has been a leader in primary cilium research.

Primary cilia are antennae-like structures found on the surface of nearly all cells in the human body.

These antennae are designed to receive signals, such as growth factor and hormones, from other cells in the body and then convert these signals to a response within individual cells.

Defective formation or function of these antennae can give rise to a range of serious maladies including heart defects, polycystic kidney disease, blindness, cancer, obesity and diabetes.

However, there remains a great deal of mystery as to how these antennae capture and convert signals within cells. The groundbreaking results have been published in Cell Reports, a prestigious scientific journal.

"We have identified an entirely new way by which these antennae are able to register signals in their midst, signals that serve to determine how cells divide and move amongst one another. This also serves to explain how a stem cell can develop into heart muscle," explains Søren Tvorup Christensen.

Dr. Søren Tvorup Christensen
"What we have found is that the antennae don't just capture signals via receptors out in the antennae, but they are also able to transport specific types of receptors down to the base of the antennae - where they are then activated and might possibly interact with a host of other signalling systems.

The receptors include the so-called Transforming Growth Factor beta (TGFβ) receptors which have previously been associated with birth defects and cancer.

Therefore, the base of the antennae can serve as a sort of control centre that coordinates the cell's ability to manage foetal development and the maintenance of organ function in adults."

TGFβ signalling and development of the heart 
Lars Allan Larsen has numerous years of experience in heart development research.

He adds "we know TGFβ signalling is very important during heart development and that a failure in this system can lead to the congenital heart defects that affect roughly 1% of all newborns.

Therefore, our discovery is a significant step towards demystifying the causes of congenital heart defects."

Professor Lars Allan Larsen
The two researchers also point out that defective TGFβ-signalling has been associated with neuro-degenerative diseases such as Alzheimers, Parkinsons disease and mental retardation.

Subsequently, the research group has begun studies on how these antennae - the primary cilia - regulate TGFβ-signalling during, among other processes, the transformation of stem cells into nerve cells.

"It's definitely an area that will be attracting lots of attention in years to come. Globally, there is a great deal of interest in understanding why the antennae are so important for our health," concludes the pair of researchers.

Dyslexia: SoundGecko App Converts Text to MP3

Soundgecko: This looks like an excellent App for those with Dyslexia, reading difficulties or are partly sighted.

We tried it out on the test article and it was clear and fairly realistic in it's speech pattern.

We would be interested to hear from anyone who has experience of this app.

Diabetes: New Compund Prevents Retina Damage

A compound that prevents damage to the retina caused by diabetic retinopathy has been developed by scientists. University of Michigan Kellogg Eye Center scientists have developed a compound that targets two mechanisms: inflammation and the weakening of the blood barrier that protects the retina that is the root cause of the disease. Diabetic retinopathy is the most common diabetic eye disease. It is caused by changes in the blood vessels in the retina, and can cause blindness in adults. In some people with diabetic retinopathy, blood vessels may swell and leak fluid. In others, abnormal new blood vessels grow on the surface of the retina. The retina is the light-sensitive tissue at the back of the eye. A healthy retina is necessary for good vision.

Crystal structure of Vammin, a VEGF-F from a snake venom

Until now, scientists believed that retina damage was caused by the activity of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), a protein that weakens the protective blood-retinal barrier. Drugs, created to treat diabetic retinopathy, have been desigend to block the protein but now, researchers have found that inflammation could also contribute to the disease. "In diabetic retinopathy and a host of other retinal diseases, increases in VEGF and inflammatory factors - some of the same factors that contribute to the response to an infection - cause blood vessels in the eye to leak which, in turn, results in a buildup of fluid in the neural tissue of the retina," said David A Antonetti, a Kellogg Eye Center researcher, in a statement. "This insidious form of modified inflammation can eventually lead to blindness."

Scientists created the new compound while studying kinase C (aPKC), a protein that was common to both mechanisms as an important target in regulating the disease process. They claim that the new compound blocks the kinase C (aPKC) protein, which in turn blocks the VEGF protein and reduces inflammation. "This is a great leap forward. We've identified an important target in regulating blood vessel leakage in the eye and we have a therapy that works in animal models. Our research is in the early stages of development. We still have a long way to go to demonstrate effectiveness of this compound in humans to create a new therapy but the results are very promising," Antonetti said.

Visually impaired youngsters invited to Astrium’s Space Technology site

A rather special event recently took place at Astrium’s Elancourt site just outside Paris, when a group of visually impaired youngsters were invited for a very hands-on visit of the plant, which specialises in the design and manufacture of electronic equipment for space rockets and satellites.

Astrium attaches a great deal of importance to activities which reach out to the wider community in an endeavour to raise the profile of the space industry, explain how it works and what it contributes to the betterment of human lives.

These activities seek to connect with a number of different audiences, from decision-makers to the ordinary man and woman in the street. Making contact with young people in an inclusive manner is a priority, since they are the space engineers and the politicians of the future.

A big hit with the children was a ‘foam model’ of the Ariane 5 launcher, with which they could really get to grips, giving them a proper feel for the shape and constituent elements of the rocket. Its presence that day was serendipitous, a neat example of agile thinking on the part of Astrium’s Model Manager, who was called upon to provide mock-ups of a number of the company’s products to enliven the children’s visit. She realised that an unlikely object tucked away in a cupboard was just the thing.

Read more here: Visually impaired youngsters invited for a hands-on visit of Astrium’s Elancourt site

Stargardt Disease: The Leading Cause of Macular Degeneration and Blidness in Children

Stargardt disease is a rare yet life devastating condition. It is the most common form of inherited macular degeneration, and affects about one in 10,000 people (about 30,000 people in the United States).

There is currently no cure or treatment for Stargardt disease but clinical trials using gene and cell therapies are currently undergoing.

Patients with Stargardt most often start experiencing significant vision loss during their childhood and teenage years (60% of the patients are diagnosed before 20 years of age).

This vision loss cannot be corrected by glasses, and diagnosis had been traditionally delayed due to the young age of the patients and the rareness of the disease.

After diagnosis, and depending on age at onset, vision deteriorates progressively to levels below 20/200 (legal blindness).

The disease affects mostly the central vision and spares some of the peripheral vision, although there are very severe forms that lead to complete blindness.

Almost all of those affected by Stargardt disease will live legally blind during their adult lives, although patients with late onset may retain some visual acuity.

Loss of central vision leads to impossibility to perform tasks such as reading, writing, driving or recognizing faces.

In 1997, scientists discovered that Stargardt disease results from a defective gene, the ABCA4, responsible for the synthesis of an important protein called Rim protein.

A normally functioning Rim protein transports vitamin A molecules from the photoreceptors (the molecules sensitive to light) back into specialized cells (called RPE), where vitamin A molecules are recycled to be reused for vision.

In Stargardt, the defects in the ABCA4 gene lead to partial or full dysfunction of this protein. As a result, vitamin A transport is affected and vitamin A molecules tend to accumulate in the photoreceptors.

This accumulation leads to the formation of toxic pigments (known as "vitamin A dimers") believed to be partly responsible for vision loss.

Although normal individual also form vitamin A dimers, this process usually takes decades, explaining why age-related macular degeneration (AMD) occurs later in life of normal people, while the same process takes only a few years in Stargardt explaining vision loss from childhood.

Read more of this article here at Alkeus - Stargardt disease

Research team uses robot eye technology to help the blind

A research team from Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris have ported technology originally developed to help robots maneuver in real world environments to Braille enabled devices that help vision impaired people do the same.

The new technology uses a pair of glasses affixed with sensors and cameras connected to hand-held devices that allow the blind wearer to “feel” the 3D environment around them.

The team from the university's Institute of Intelligent Systems and Robotics will be presenting their findings at this month’s IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

The new technology incorporates cameras and sensors initially developed for use with robotics technology, along with image processing hardware and software, to gather information about the surrounding environment.

From there though, the two technologies diverge. Instead of the data collected being routed to AI systems for use by a robot, it moves instead to a processor that converts 3D imagery to Braille signals that are passed along to real-time Braille devices in the hands of the person using the device.

The result, the team says, is situational awareness unlike anything else currently available to assist the blind in moving around without benefit of a cane, guide dog or other assistive device.

To create true 3D imagery, the system uses two cameras on each side of the glasses, which are connected to an image processor that picks out objects, edges and other pertinent details of the view ahead.

From that, a map is generated to represent the scene from the user’s perspective. That map, along with data from a gyroscope and accelerometers that provide information about speed and current location, is then converted by another processor to a series of signals that are sent to the Braille devices in the hand.

Each is a flat pad with pins that can be raised or lowered using heat, to create a virtual tactile real-time image of the surrounding environment and because the system generates new maps at a rate of about ten per second, the user is able to move, the developers say, at walking speed through a real world environment.

Only time will tell of course, just how useful the new technology will be, as those that use it will likely develop a connection with the system over time akin to the way others grow accustomed to keyboards, canes and guide dogs, and only they will be able to judge whether new systems such as this are as useful as they appear in demonstrations.

This is not the only robotics project to be re-purposed. Software that predicts how far a robot has travelled based on information from its on-board sensors is being modified to track a person's movements based on their stride length. 

The low-cost system, being developed by Eelke Folmer and Kostas Bekris at the University of Nevada in Reno would help blind people navigate around buildings using just a smartphone.

The new system uses freely available 2D digital indoor maps and the smartphone's built-in accelerometer and compass. Directions are provided using synthetic speech. 

To help the smartphone calibrate and adjust to a user's individual stride length, the user must initially use touch to detect the landmarks in their environment, such as corridor intersections, doors and elevators. 

The system will be presented at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in St Paul, Minnesota, in May.

David Ross at the Atlanta Vision Loss Center in Decatur, Georgia, says that the sensing problems faced by robots and blind people are similar but there are big differences. "Sensing systems developed for mobile robots may have some application, but must be adapted considerably to suit a wide variety of human needs and situations," he says.

The Black Book of Colours - The Partly Sighted Companion

Today must be the day for tickling the outer limits of our senses. From the synesthetic explorations of sound through colour earlier today, we take the creative mind-bending a step further: Experiencing colour through the lack of colour.  

The Black Book of Colours, from author Menena Cottin and illustrator Rosana Faria, is a remarkable book of simple, elegant illustrations of natural objects, from strawberries to rain to bird feathers, depicted not through colour and shading but through embossed lines, inviting the viewer to experience them tactilely rather than visually.







The book is designed as an empathy tool that allows a sighted person to step inside the world of the blind, who experience the world through their fingers rather than their eyes.



Though intended for children, The Black Book of Colours is an absolute treat for adults, not merely as a feat of aesthetic elegance, but also as a beautiful philosophical metaphor for all those things in our lives that both are and aren’t, like the nature of reality or solitude or some great love we can touch with the tender tips of our fingers but never fully grasp.

BrailleTouch App: Helps blind to send text messages

Researchers at Georgia Tech produced the app - to be made available on Apple and Android devices - based on the Braille writing system.

It is claimed typing with the app is up to six times faster than existing methods for texting without sight.

Access to technology for the visually-impaired is a growing issue due to the proliferation of touchscreens.

Experts say currently available tools, such as Apple's Voiceover technology, are functional but too slow to be used effectively.

Brailletouch, which the team hope to release in the next couple of weeks, uses a system that is controlled with six fingers and, crucially, does not require any movement of the hands.

"Users who know how to type Braille well never move their hands," explained Mario Romero, lead researcher on the project.

"When users hold the phone they hold the phone with the screen facing away from them in landscape mode.

"They wrap the index, middle and ring finger in each hand around the phone.

"It's not like the Qwerty keyboard where you move up and down. That's why this thing works - we can get away with only six keys."

"This is not for texting and driving” Mario Romero Lead researcher

Eyes-free kit

Brailletouch will be free and open-source, its makers say, and it is hoped it could even become an "eyes-free" solution for fully-sighted people who want to text while visually pre-occupied with something else.

"Learning to type Braille is learning to memorise where the the dots fall," Mr Romero said.

"It took me and my colleagues a few hours to memorise things so we could start typing at around 10 words per minute. It's not something that takes years.

"We're hoping that, if not Braille, a similar system may solve the issue of having too many keys that are too small that force everybody to look at the screen when they're typing."

However, Mr Romero was quick to dampen any possible hopes that the software could be used to text while behind the wheel.

"They need to concentrate on what they're doing. This is not for texting and driving," he said.

'Truly blind'
Mr Romero highlighted a growing anxiety shared among the blind community that the widespread adoption of touchscreens for many machines and devices is making them "truly blind".

"There is extreme concern about this new trend.

"A lot of equipment today - from copying machines to machines at the gym - is all coming with touch screens."

He added that while research into tactile screens, which give users feedback by moulding, is taking place, we are still some way from having touchscreens which adequately cater for the visually-impaired.

"Blind people say I 'see' things with my fingers," Mr Romero said.

"But on touchscreens they are truly blind."

Audio Description - RNIB

Audio Description

On the RNIB website is:

• What is audio description?
• Where can I get audio description?
• Try audio description
• Audio description campaign
• Advice for professionals
• Award winning RNIB team
• More information

Everything you need to know about audio description (AD) and where it is available.

Amazon eBook readers and apps - RNIB

Amazon eBook readers and apps

You will find the following on the RNIB website:

• Kindle (reader)
• Kindle Keyboard (reader)
• Kindle for PC with accessibility (app)
• Other Kindle apps
• Kindle Touch and Kindle Fire (readers)
• Kindle DX (reader)

Amazon are a US company that make some of their products available in the UK. The first four items mentioned below are available in the UK now, the next two are expected to be available soon and the last - the Kindle DX - is only available through the US Amazon website.
Apart from the differences between readers and apps given below, there are other differences which are not so obvious. For example, some newspaper and magazine titles are available for the readers but not the apps.

Blind users gain Internet access via Smartphones

Jessica Rathwell holds her iPhone close to her ear while she types out a tweet using special voiceover technology. With remarkable speed, she navigates her way through her tiny keyboard, adding and deleting letters.

Rathwell is blind, and she is a self-described huge Apple fan and tech geek.

Her technology skills have led her to a career in teaching other blind and low-vision people to use Apple computers and devices as they come out of the box, with no additional technology or modifications.

She got her first Apple computer in the 1990s, but had to give up the operating system when they took a big step away from assistive technology.

That meant years of working on a Microsoft system. In 2008, Rathwell saw the Tiger 10.4 operating system for Apple computers that had voice-enabled software. It was the first time Rathwell could take a stock unit out of the box and use it as is.

"For me, it was the joy of inclusion," she says. "When you spend your life in school having to always have some sort of assistive technology, it feels so good when you no longer have to."

By all accounts, Rathwell is a whiz on all things Apple, and teaches other people at the Nanaimo and Region Disability Resource Centre to use a computer and gain full access to the Internet.

Rathwell's Microsoft counterpart is Aedan Staddon. The two have a friendly rivalry, and Rathwell has started learning on Mac computers as well.

"Learning from a blind person is better because they teach you what you realistically can and can't do," he says.

He is currently taking online courses in computer programming through the Cisco Academy for the Visually Impaired.

A room full of people who have sight issues discuss their pre-ferred operating system, and talk about Twitter and Facebook. Before Rathwell and Staddon started teaching, their students' experience with the technology could be kind of scary and frustrating. That's changed now, and their students at NRDRC, a volunteer charity, are happy.

"The Internet is a conversation point," says Rathwell. "And it's nice to be able to use it the same way anybody does."

NFB: Early Explorers

The National Federation of the Blind - Early Explorers Program - A Cane Travel Program for Blind and Low Vision Children Ages Infant to Seven

NFB Early Explorers is a free program designed to introduce young blind children and their families to the long white cane.

Providing children with an early start to independent movement and travel ensures that children will be more confident and curious travelers throughout life.

Possessing these skills allows young blind children to learn and play alongside their peers with ease.

Program participants will receive
• Travel Tales, a quarterly parent e-newsletter filled with ideas about how to foster age-appropriate movement in young children through the use of the long white cane
• An informational DVD
• A child-sized white cane
• A subscription to Future Reflections (a quarterly publication for parents and educators presenting articles on a variety of topics)
• Access to a network of resources devoted to serving parents of blind children

Mission of the NFB Early Explorers Program
• Introduce young children and their families to the long white cane
• Provide parents strategies to teach their children cane travel
• Make parents aware of essential resources for promoting success for their young blind children
• Help parents teach beginning cane travel skills
• Help parents instill in their child a love of traveling with a long white cane

Here’s How the Program Works…
1. Complete the Early Explorers Program Registration form online. For any question you may have, the contact information is listed at the bottom of this page.
2. Soon after you register, you will receive your child-sized long white cane and your packet of materials for the program.
3. Read the quarterly parent e-newsletter for tips and ideas for travel activities you can do with your child.
4. As often as possible encourage your child to take his cane with him everywhere he goes and have fun exploring and discovering exciting features of his environment with his favorite new tool, the long white cane.

The National Organization of Parents of Blind Children (NOPBC), a division of the National Federation of the Blind, is a great resource for parents of young blind children. Please visit the NOPBC main page for more great information.

The NFB Early Explorers Program is sponsored by the NFB Jernigan Institute and NOPBC.
If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions about the NFB Early Explorers Program, please contact:


Meleah Jensen
Earlyexplorers@nfb.org
200 East Wells Street
at Jernigan Place
Baltimore, MD 21230
(410) 659-9314, Extension 2418

Read More: NFB - Early Explorers

Aiding the Blind: Kinecthesia - Oct 2011 - YouTube

Two Students from the University of Pennsylvania have modified a Kinect to help the vision impaired to become more aware of their environment. The project is called Kinecthesia and functions as a radar-like device, but instead of using sound, the device uses the Kinect's cameras to map out the environment and translate it into a sensation the blind can understand.

Eric Berdinis and Jeff Kiske, juniors of the University of Pennsylvania majoring in Computer Engineering, has garnered attention in the 2011 Google's Zeitergeist Young Minds Conference with their application of the gaming peripheral.

The project was born from both student's final project for Rahul Mangharam's embedded systems class. The resulting device can be likened to a high-tech walking cane.

The Kinect is a motion detecting gaming peripheral produced by Microsoft. The device is used for the Xbox 360 which can interpret specific gestures and track movement of individuals or objects.

The device is composed of an RGB camera, an infrared sensor acting as a depth sensor and multiple-array microphone. It can perform facial recognition, voice recognition and gesture recognition.

Using the Kinect's multiple cameras, Berdinis and Kiske have made a harness that produces vibrations to notify the wearer of coming obstacles.

The Kinect is connected to a BeagleBoard, a whole computer in a single board, and fitted in a waistband or belt. The device is ran in Linux and 16 AAA batteries. Since it was still in development the device is not made to run for hours. There are six vibrating motors to guide the user and weighs 1349g as of now.

There are already a number of people hacking their Kinect devices for other applications besides gaming like 3D modeling, controlling robots and using motion capture to automate devices, augment reality, and even produce a low-budget CGIs for amateur movies.


It is great that people are experimenting and applying on technologies readily available for them. Will this open doors on new innovators? Does Microsoft see a new market for their devices?

The project's development can be tracked on their own website at kinecthesia.com. The website also contains the project source code, parts list and assembly instructions.

Top Braille - Valleys WordWorks English

Portable device enabling access to all printed text

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Read it With Braille and speech output …

INSTANTLY !!!

Top-Braille is a revolutionary personal reading assistant ideally designed to provide vision-impaired people with instant access to all printed text. Its small size makes it convenient for all situations

Dramatic enhancement and greater freedom in daily life: Top-Braille provides increased access to the work environment, information and culture.

Top-Braille provides numerous openings to a world which has been almost inaccessible until now.

The integrated speech feature makes it a perfect pedagogical tool for learning Braille.

Discrete, lightweight and ergonomic, this device will rapidly become essential in the daily lives of vision-impaired people.

Key Functions:

• Recognition of all printed text with Braille and speech output;
• Recognition of all printed text with Braille output only;
• Colour recognition;
• Reading of preloaded (USB) text with Braille and speech output;

An essential tool for accessing information and culture

While moving along a text line, Top Braille captures images, recognizes

printed text and sends information translated in Braille to the user.

Read more here

Vision Impaired Josh soldiers on with wooden toys

TOY soldiers lovingly made by a devoted dad are helping a little boy with sight problems.

Josh New had struggled to read and write as he found it difficult to focus on the words on a page.

The six-year-old, of Whitley Bay, had struggled to keep up with his classmates at Appletree Gardens First School in Monkseaton until he was diagnosed with binocular instability.

The youngster’s parents were so concerned that their son was lacking in concentration and complained of “words flying off the page” that Josh was taken to Keyes Opticians in Gosforth, Newcastle, where it was discovered he had the disorder.

To help his son improve his eye muscle co-ordination, his dad Sean spent time making a row of wooden soldier pegs – all of different colours, faces and heights – that Josh focuses on for at least five minutes a day.

That, combined with regular eye exercises supplied by optician Andrew Keyes, has enabled Josh’s vision to improve dramatically. He is now enjoying his reading and his writing is much better.

Sean, 40, said: “It is important that Josh focuses on something each day and because he is only young I decided to make the wooden peg soldiers for him to look at as I thought it would be fun.

“The reaction I received from Josh was great. He does his exercises and makes sure he focuses on the soldiers. Josh has coped well with his condition and is making great progress.”
Josh with his mam Joanne and dad Sean

Binocular instability is often linked to dyslexia and Josh, who has three brothers – twins Alfie and Toby, seven-months, and Jamie, 17 – will undergo tests to see if he has the condition.

The youngster is known to also have visual stress.

His mam Joanne, 37, who works with children with special needs, said: “We are absolutely thrilled to see a huge change in Josh. His reading has come on in leaps and bounds.

Josh soldiering on thanks to wooden toys - Chronicle News - News - ChronicleLive

Bionic eye restores sight in the blind: Approved for European market

Eric Selby likes his bionic eye. When the glasses are on his face, he can see. Sort of.

He can only see shapes in white, grey and black. But Selby is one of the first in the world to have an implant in his right eye. So how does he feel about his artificial retina?

But Selby told his local newspaper: “This might not be a life-changing experience for me but if it can help kids in the future then I think it’s worth it.” Selby travels to London frequently to participate in the clinical trial he enrolled in.

The company behind the bionic eye, California-based Second Sight, got a green light to bring its retinal prosthesis treatment to the European Market.

The Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System takes in video images from a camera.

It’s easy to wear, the patient’s glasses are made with an attached camera. The signals are then transmitted via pulses sent to the implant in the eye, where the signal is read by the retina’s working cells.

Now, the vision isn’t 20/20 or anything, but images in the form of shapes and light/dark can be sent from the chip to the brain’s optic nerve thanks to 60 electrodes that pick up some differences.

According to the company, the 30 blind patients participating in the implant study could see “large letters, locate the position of objects and the best could read short words.”

In case you are still wondering how the system works, the BBC described how the bionic eye system worked for patients at one of ten clinical trial locations around the world. Okay, so what about FDA approval? Well, that’s still pending.

For now, this bionic eye can only help people with retinitis pigmentosa. That’s a start for the field of synthetic sight…giving the blind a chance to see again. Perhaps, this bionic eye system will offer long-term solutions for patients with other types of advanced retinal degenerative diseases in the future.

Unfortunately, the whole system isn’t cheap though, according to The Australian. The implant, glasses, camera and battery will set a patient back $100,000… and the surgery could cost as much as $15,000.

Other companies in the space include German-based Retina Implant and Bionic Vision Australia.

A Bionic Eye Comes to Market [Technology Review]

Video: Bionic eye gives partial sight to blind [CBS]

Mobile Accessibility for Poorly Sighted - Demo UK - Android Market

This application has been designed for people who are blind or partly sighted but it could equally work with people with word or number blidness.



Visit the site for more information Mobile Accessibility Demo UK - Android Market

This application has been designed for people who are blind, partly sighted or sight impaired.

This is a fully functional 30 days evaluation version of Mobile Accessibility.

Mobile Accessibility is a screen-access application which allows people who are blind or have low vision to use an Android phone in an intuitive, easy and simple way.

Mobile Accessibility is two products in one:

- It is a suite of 10 accessible applications (Phone, Contacts, SMS, Alarm, Calendar, Email, Web, Where am I, Apps and Settings) which have been especially designed for the blind and visually impaired. They all have a simplified interface whose textual information is spoken using Nuance Vocalizer® voice synthesis.

- It is also a screen reader which allows you to get out of the suite and navigate the standard interface of your phone.
Please note that if you want to use the screen reader functionality of Mobile Accessibility you will need a phone with physical navigational controls such as a trackball or trackpad.

Inside the Mobile Accessibility suite of accessible applications you can do the following:

- Phone: Make calls, answer calls, hear the caller ID and manage your call log.
- Contacts: Manage your contacts, even those from social networks such as Facebook.
- SMS: Compose and read short messages. Manage conversations.
- Alarms: Set your alarms.
- Web: Full web browser experience, similar to what you can find on your PC. Jump by the control of your choice (links, paragraphs, headings, forms, etc.) to navigate faster to the information of your interest. Bookmark your favourite webpages.
- Calendar: Create, edit and delete a calendar entry. View all events per day, week or month.
- Email: Full access to your Gmail account.
- Where am I? : GPS application that gives you updates on your current location.
- Apps: Access the list of apps installed on your Android phone.
- Settings: Change ringtone. Configure feedback and notifications (vibration or audio). Configure keyboard echo, punctuation verbosity, speech pitch and rate, etc.
- Quick access to date and time, phone status information such as battery level and network coverage, number of missed calls and unread messages, etc.

Main Highlights:

- Touch navigation: You can use Mobile Accessibility not only with the trackball or the physical keyboard of your phone, but also with its touchscreen! Simply move your finger around the screen and the voice synthesis will read the text located under your finger. Or if you prefer, you can also swipe up/down/right/left and tap on the screen to navigate through the interface. And if you wish you can enable sound and vibration feedback.

- Easy to input text: In or outside the Mobile Accessibility suite you can use the touch qwerty keyboard as well as the speech recognition to write text quickly and easily. Imagine writing an SMS or an Email using your voice only... just great!

- Voice synthesis: Code Factory has been making mobile phones accessible to the blind and visually impaired for many years now, and we know that the voice matters... and a lot! For Mobile Accessibility Code Factory has partnered with Nuance® and Vocalizer® is therefore the voice of Mobile Accessibility.

Colour Blindness in Motion

A new illusion shows how our perception of objects changes as soon as they start moving.

At first, the ring of dots is motionless and it's easy to tell that the dots are changing color. When the ring begins to rotate, however, the dots suddenly appear to stop changing.

The faster the ring moves, the less the colours appear to change. But in reality, they were changing the whole time, at the same rate. As the video shows, the illusion also works for brightness, shape and size.

The phenomenon - change blindness - by which observers don't notice that an image is changing in front of their eyes, isn't new.

Nor is the notion that motion affects the way we see objects - watch our video special on moving illusions for lots of other cool examples - this new illusion designed by Jordan Sochow and George Alvarez at Harvard University demonstrates the principle especially well.

The pair believe the illusion occurs because the areas of the retina responsible for detecting these changes are local - each part of the visual field is monitored by a specific part of the retina. Because a fast moving object spends little time at any one location, a local detector only has a small window of time in which to assess the changing object - and therefore fails to detect the change. 

Journal Reference: Current Biology, DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2010.12.019

US Courts support right of Blind Woman to use tech aids to take Exams

The National Federation of the Blind (NFB), the oldest and largest nationwide organisation of blind people, today applauded a federal appellate court ruling affirming the right of a blind California woman to use screen access technology to take professional examinations required for her to receive a license to practice law.

The ruling, handed down yesterday by a unanimous three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Judicial Circuit, upheld preliminary injunctions granted by a federal district court requiring the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) to provide electronic copies of its legal examinations to Stephanie Enyart so that she could read the questions with text-to-speech and magnification software.

The NCBE had appealed the injunctions, arguing that the law did not require it to provide electronic copies of the examinations and that Enyart must choose from the menu of accommodations it was willing to provide.
Marc Maurer, President of the National Federation of the Blind, said: "The National Federation of the Blind welcomes this ruling, which means that testing agencies must afford the accommodations and auxiliary aids that are most likely to level the playing field for the blind and other test takers with disabilities.

The court made it clear that law and equity simply do not permit the NCBE to dictate a one-size-fits-all solution for all bar candidates with disabilities. The ruling stands solidly for the principle that the NCBE and all testing organizations must consider the individual needs of each examination candidate and that accommodation policies must change as access technology continues to improve.

It is our sincere hope that the NCBE will change its rigid and outdated accommodation policies to reflect the letter and spirit of this ruling, and that other entities that administer educational and professional examinations will take note and do likewise. The National Federation of the Blind stands ready to fight for the rights of blind students and aspiring professionals and to make sure that this ruling is faithfully followed."

According to the ruling, Ms. Enyart established that screen reader software, which speaks text on the screen out loud and/or magnifies it visually, is her primary reading method and the way she took most of her law school examinations.

The court upheld the validity of a Department of Justice regulation, promulgated pursuant to Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), requiring that "the examination is selected and administered so as to best ensure that when the examination is administered to an individual with a disability . . . the examination results accurately reflect the individual's aptitude or achievement level . . . rather than reflecting the individual's [disability]."

Read more of this article at : www.disabled-world.com/