Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Implant Translates Written Words To Braille, Right On the Retina

Posted by timothy on from the downright-amazing dept.

An anonymous reader writes "For the first time, blind people could read street signs with a device that translates letters into Braille and beams the results directly onto a person's eye." According to the article, "In a trial conducted on a single patient who already used the [predecessor] device, the person was able to correctly read Braille letters up to 89 percent of the time, and most of the inaccuracy appeared when the participant misread a single letter. The user was able to read one word a second."

3 of 75 comments (clear)

  1. Why not just use the letter? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I was always under the impression that the braille language is meant to be touched, not "read" via sight. Wouldn't it make more sense to just project the letters into the person's retina vs. the dots for Braille?

    1. Re:Why not just use the letter? by __aaltlg1547 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I was always under the impression that the braille language is meant to be touched, not "read" via sight. Wouldn't it make more sense to just project the letters into the person's retina vs. the dots for Braille?

      because the blind people do NOT know what the letter is usually, but they know braille.

      don't need to retrain them to use the device, i'm sure one that display letters would be made later.

      People with retinitis pigmentosa are formerly sighted. It's not a given that they know braille and almost a given that they can recognized standard letters. Braille was chosen because of the crudity of the device.

  2. Re:Being blind is fine by Gaygirlie · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Think about how it feels to lose your sight.

    I have thought about if a few times, and well, I'd lose everything I care about if I lost my eye-sight. If there was zero chance of me getting my eye-sight back within a year I would not hesitate a second to commit a suicide.