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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."

24 of 75 comments (clear)

  1. Missing by girlintraining · · Score: 4, Funny

    "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."

    There's something missing here. I can't... quite... put my finger on it. I'm sure I'll get it in a minute.

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    1. Re:Missing by Swave+An+deBwoner · · Score: 3, Funny

      You missed .. reading the article. No worries, just click on the link and you'll be fine.

    2. Re:Missing by girlintraining · · Score: 2

      You missed .. reading the article. No worries, just click on the link and you'll be fine.

      I was making a joke about the poor summary by the submitter and miserable lack of editorial quality by the approver. And I'd click on the link but someone sent me a youtube of a cat. Humor is such a subjective thing. So, a man walks into a bar...

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    3. Re:Missing by philip.paradis · · Score: 2

      I see what you did there. Or maybe I don't.

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    4. Re:Missing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Braille : Small sharp dots.
      Retina : Sensitive and fragile human organ.

      "Hey, what are you doing ?"
      "We are giving you the new reading aid for the blind."
      "But I'm not blind !"
      "You will be."

  2. 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 Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      In the case of people born blind, they were only taught to read braille. It might actually be more difficult for someone to learn a brand new character set AND adjust to "seeing" the words.

    2. Re:Why not just use the letter? by korgitser · · Score: 4, Informative

      I'd also go with the fact that braille is 6-bit byte binary. That's about as simple i/o as you can get in this area.

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    3. Re:Why not just use the letter? by Mal-2 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Braille is a six-bit binary code. This was done largely because the previous system -- raised type being "read" by fingers -- was slow and inadequate. Whether the input comes through your fingertips or through the optic nerve matters little. If the bandwidth is low, it helps a lot of the content is pre-digitized. That's what Braille does.

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    4. Re:Why not just use the letter? by DaemonDan · · Score: 2

      According to the article this only works with people who have had a degenerative eye disease called retinal pigmentosis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retinitis_pigmentosa), which slowly destroys the person's peripheral vision. It wouldn't work with people who didn't have functional optic nerves to begin with. I think it's more a case of braille being simpler to transmit via electrodes (number and position of dots compared to the entire shape of a letter) as other commenters have mentioned.

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    5. Re:Why not just use the letter? by arth1 · · Score: 2

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

      Where? Every blind person I have known could read letters on a plastic sheet, and write using a special scratching pen. Not to say anything about using a tactile display for zooming in on computer displays.

      While Braille may be good (but not great) for finger reading, and has lots of momentum, it doesn't mean Braille is good for eye reading.

      Our latin letters probably aren't the best either, but at least they contain enough extra information that the letters tend to be readable even if partially obscured, at any angle, and even when superimposed (like letters used to be written crosshatch, both horizontally and vertically on top of each other, to save on paper and weight).

      Braille is much more finicky. It may have been chosen here because all they can reliably give the person is a few on/off points, but even then, I think investing the time in devising a system specifically for the application would have been worthwhile.

      A best case of "up to 89% accurate" really means "mostly a hell of a lot worse, but never better".

    6. 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.

  3. flashback to flash sound ads by cdxta · · Score: 2

    Ready?, two ad videos that start playing with audio on the same page?

  4. Re:a trial of one by amRadioHed · · Score: 4, Insightful

    These aren't drug trials here, you don't need a large sample size to determine probable effects. The guy is blind. If he can suddenly read after using this device we can be pretty certain the device is responsible.

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  5. The blind know braille but maybe not latin letters by kawabago · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You can't assume blind people are familiar with the alphabet as we see it. They recognize a letter as a dot pattern instead of latin letter. It means 'a' to them be they might never know what 'a' actually looks like.

  6. Another Great Slashdot Summary by neoshroom · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Slashdot Summary:

    "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.'"

    Actual Article:

    "The technology, used primarily for patients with retinal pigmentosis which causes patients to lose the use of their retina but to still have working neurons, can take up to 10 seconds to convert a single letter and minutes to read a single word, and can only be used with words that are printed in a large font and held up close to a person's face. Street signs, for example, cannot be read. "

    __

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    1. Re:Another Great Slashdot Summary by dissy · · Score: 5, Informative

      If you read a bit further in the article, you'll note the part you quoted is the description of the PREVIOUS model device.

      The CURRENT model, which the summary is talking about, being an improvement to the original, CAN read street signs and at one letter a second.

      I use caps since you don't obviously don't read everything presented :P

    2. Re:Another Great Slashdot Summary by neoshroom · · Score: 4, Funny

      PREVIOUS CURRENT CAN? I say, previous current cannot nor could it ever.

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  7. One word per second by PPH · · Score: 4, Funny

    Beware ..... of ...... the ......vicious .......dog.......

    Auggghhh!

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  8. Re:The blind know braille but maybe not latin lett by adolf · · Score: 2

    They recognize a letter as a dot pattern instead of latin letter. It means 'a' to them be they might never know what 'a' actually looks like./blockquote:

    "A" looks like this: .

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  9. 89% of the time, it works every time by renhwa · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "In a trial conducted on a single patient who already used the Argus II 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."

    ...so by "the person was able to correctly read Braille letters up to 89 percent of the time," they mean that at one point during the test, they showed the guy a 9 letter word, and he got 1 letter wrong. Did the patient 1/9 letters wrong overall, or was this one rare mistake? How many words did they have the patient read? The technology is amazing, don't get me wrong, but somebody needs to tell their product testing/PR crews how to convey performance in a remotely meaningful way.

  10. Suck it, Apple by Stormwatch · · Score: 5, Funny

    Now THIS is a retina display!

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  11. An army of one by FatLittleMonkey · · Score: 3, Funny

    Do you make more than one prototype once your first prototype shows the basic method works? Why would you do that?

    Pickle's worried about the placebo effect.

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  12. Re:a trial of one by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    i think we need a double blind study before we can be certain.