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| Donna Coveney |
| Elizabeth Goldring, a senior fellow at MIT's Center for Advanced Visual Studies, looks at an image she created to approximate what she sees when she looks through her seeing machine at an image of a staircase. |
A blind poet who studies visual impairment at MIT in Boston has developed a machine that can help the sightless see useful images, such as the layout of an unfamiliar building.
Elizabeth Goldring, 61, came up with the idea after doctors tested her eyesight with a $100,000 "scanning laser opthalmoscope", which projects images directly onto the retina, bypassing other areas of the eye that are the actual cause of impaired vision. Goldring was able to see the word "sun" -- the first word the poet had seen in months -- and that got her thinking about developing a smaller, less expensive version of the device.
She and a group of scientists at MIT have developed a $4,000 machine that projects a visual language created by Goldring directly onto the retinas of blind people. The sightless can also see images of building interiors and familiarize themselves with the layout.
The New York Times published a story about it today.
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