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."

Seeing Things That Aren’t There? Charles Bonnet Syndrome

One woman saw a fully dressed Royal Canadian mountie in her living room. Another saw the same red brick building in every part of town, as well as in the country. One man saw monkeys with red hats and blue coats playing in his yard.

They were all experiencing Charles Bonnet (“bo-nay”) Syndrome.

“Do you ever see something you know is not there, but it looks real?” It’s a question that Lylas G. Mogk, M.D., and Raman Deol, O.D., of the Henry Ford Center for Vision Rehabilitation and Research in metropolitan Detroit, always ask their low-vision patients.

Low vision that cannot be improved through corrective lenses or surgery can be the result of macular degeneration, glaucoma, diabetes, stroke, or other causes.

Some of their patients respond that they see purple flowers everywhere, even in winter. Others see animals, people, buildings, or geometric, quilt-like patterns. They rarely share their experience with their families, for fear of being misunderstood. Some wonder whether the visions suggest early dementia.

In 1789, Swiss naturalist Charles Bonnet described the visions of his father-in-law, who had low vision and saw people, animals and other objects that he knew were not real.

Bonnet himself experienced phantom visions later in his life, similar to those of his father-in-law. Bonnet’s discovery went largely unnoticed for 150 years until the 1930s, when doctors rediscovered his files and named the syndrome after him.

The frequently undiagnosed Charles Bonnet Syndrome is very common, affecting 20 – 30 percent of those with low vision. Some may experience it for a few months, others for several years.

The images can occur daily or only occasionally, with the same image appearing to the same person. There is no cure, but most people are not bothered by the images, and many find them interesting or amusing, especially once they understand it’s just their eyes playing tricks on them.

Although the cause is not known, the images can be compared to the “phantom pain” that can be felt by people who have had a limb amputated.

The nerves that were connected to the missing limb still send signals to the brain. In our visual system, the nerves no longer receiving visual messages can cause the brain to “see” realistic images, while recognizing they are not real.

Many physicians are not yet aware of Charles Bonnet Syndrome, and may mistake it for psychotic hallucinations. Patients with the syndrome have been misdiagnosed and prescribed anti-psychotic medications.

To identify Charles Bonnet Syndrome, ophthalmologists use these criteria:
• The person has low vision.
• The images occur when the person is conscious, with open eyes.
• The person recognizes the images are not real.
• The same image appears repeatedly, superimposed on the real world. For example, the person sees a room normally, but the wall appears to have flowers on it and only that same image of flowers recurs to that same person.
• Images are only visual; they may move, but there are no sounds or smells. It’s like seeing a picture, or watching a silent movie.
• Images are common, familiar objects. They may be amusing or mildly annoying, but not frightening.
People with low vision who believe they may be experiencing Charles Bonnet Syndrome should discuss it with their ophthalmologist.

Playing Outdoors Helps Children see further

A new analysis of recent eye health studies shows that more time spent outdoors is related to reduced rates of nearsightedness, also known as myopia, in children and adolescents.

Myopia is much more common today in the United States and many other countries than it was in the 1970s. In parts of Asia, more than 80 percent of the population is nearsighted.

The analysis suggests that more exposure to natural light and/or time spent looking at distant objects may be key factors.

The analysis was led by Dr. Justin Sherwin of the University of Cambridge.

The data included in the analysis was drawn from eight carefully selected studies on outdoor time and myopia in children and adolescents, representing 10,400 participants in total.

Dr. Sherwin’s team concluded that for each additional hour spent outdoors per week, the chance of myopia dropped by approximately two percent.

Nearsighted children spent on average 3.7 fewer hours per week outdoors than those who either had normal vision or were farsighted.

Though the reasons aren’t yet clear, the protective effect appears to result from simply being outdoors rather than performing a specific activity.

Two of the eight studies examined whether children who spent more time outdoors were also those who spent less time performing near work, such as playing computer games or studying, but no such relationship was found in either study.

The amount of time spent on near work is of interest to researchers as another potential cause for the recent uptick in nearsightedness.

“Increasing children’s outdoor time could be a simple and cost-effective measure with important benefits for their vision and general health” said Dr. Khawaja.

“If we want to make clear recommendations, however, we’ll need more precise data. Future, prospective studies will help us understand which factors, such as increased use of distance vision, reduced use of near vision, natural ultra violet light exposure or physical activity, are most important.”

Sea urchins see with their entire body

Many animals have eyes that are incredibly complex – others manage without. Researchers at the University of Gothenburg have shown that sea urchins see with their entire body despite having no eyes at all.

The study has been published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Most animals react to light and have developed a very sophisticated way of seeing complex images so that they can function in their surroundings.

Good examples include insects’ compound eyes and the human eye. Charles Darwin and other evolutionary biologists were bewildered by the eye’s complexity and wondered how this kind of structure could have evolved through natural selection.

But some creatures, such as sea urchins, can react to light even though they do not have eyes. Previous studies of sea urchins have shown that they have a large number of genes linked to the development of the retina, which is the light-sensitive tissue in the human eye.

This means that sea urchins have several genes that are coded for a widely occurring eye protein, opsin.

“It was this discovery that underpinned our research,” says Sam Dupont from the University of Gothenburg’s Department of Marine Ecology, one of the researchers behind the study and co-authors of the article.

“We wanted to see where the opsin was located in sea urchins so that we could find the sensory light structures, or photoreceptors. We quite simply wanted to know where the sea urchin sees from.”

The research group behind the study showed that the photoreceptors seem to be located on the tip and base of the tube feet that are found all over the sea urchin’s body and are used to move.

“We argue that the entire adult sea urchin can act as a huge compound eye, and that the shadow that is cast by the animal’s opaque skeleton over the light-sensitive cells can give it directional vision,” says Dupont.

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.



Mobile Accessibility Demo UK - Android Market

This application has been designed for people who are blind.

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.

Killer Asteroid Hunter suffering from Short-Sightedness

The first of the asteroid-hunting Pan-STARRS telescopes will be taken apart today in an effort to solve problems with image quality.

The 1.8-metre PS1 telescope is the first of a suite of instruments – the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System – designed to find asteroids and comets with orbits that could bring them close to Earth.

Sited atop a volcano on the Hawaiian island of Maui, PS1 is the prototype for a planned four telescopes that will image the whole sky visible from Hawaii three times each month.

To scan so much sky, PS1 boasts a 1.4-billion-pixel digital camera and specially designed software to process the terabytes of data collected by the telescope each night.

But since the camera was installed in 2007, the telescope team has been struggling to get PS1's image quality to its targeted level. "There have been problems that we just didn't anticipate," says Pan-STARRS principal investigator Nick Kaiser of the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Big bananas

PS1's first problem was a misalignment of the optics. "When we switched the telescope on two years ago we had terrible-looking images. We could get sort-of round stars in the middle of the field, but they were big and fuzzy. But the stars at ends of the field looked like telephone handles or big bananas," Kaiser told New Scientist.

That problem was quickly fixed, but the images PS1 is taking are still 40 to 50 per cent fuzzier than they are supposed to be. "We're spending half our time doing mediocre science and half our time trying to improve it so we can do great science," says PS1's director, Ken Chambers, a colleague of Kaiser at Manoa.

The main culprit now seems to be a set of joints connected to the 18 rods that hold up the telescope's secondary mirror. These joints help connect the mirror to motors that adjust the mirror to counteract distortions of the telescope, which expands and contracts due to temperature changes and sags slightly as it scans across the sky.

The minute adjustments of the mirror are not occurring as they should be owing to a flaw in the original design, says Kaiser. So a crew will remove the secondary mirror to replace the joints and make other improvements to the support structure. The telescope is expected to be offline for several weeks, but if all goes well the procedure should go a long way toward improving the telescope's image quality.