Navigation helping devices for the visually impaired span all levels of technology, affordability and feasibility. The Blind Guider concept from designers Jang Cheng, Hui-Chuan Ma, Chih-Hao Wang and Yin-Kai Li is high on functionality and technology, but scores a little lower on the scale of possibility. The system consists of guide bricks with RFID chips embedded which communicate with sensors on the bottom of the guide cane.

When a visually impaired person is walking along a sidewalk and approaches one of the guide bricks, the RFID tag inside the brick interacts with the guide cane to identify the street on which the walker stands. The information is sent to the wireless earpiece worn by the user, telling that person exactly where they are. The user can then move the cane around to other parts of the guide brick in order to navigate to their destination.

When the cane is not in use, the Bluetooth earpiece fits neatly into the top of the cane. The concept definitely seems useful, but in order for the system to be put into place it would have to be installed in a widespread area, such as an entire city. The infrastructure changes required to implement the Blind Guider system would be expensive and, unfortunately, probably deemed an unsuitable public works project. As a concept meant to help people, however, the Blind Guider is about as creative as it gets.

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Restoring sight to the blind is one of those final frontiers of medicine that we’ve all been waiting for. Researchers at Stanford have developed a retinal implant that communicates wirelessly with a camera in a pair of sunglasses. The video is projected directly onto the retina, restoring at least a portion of the patient’s sight.

Retinal implants to restore sight are not new – in fact, they’ve been in use for several years already. But the Stanford team saw a problem that needed to be fixed: previous implants have been physically linked to the sunglasses, and a large portion of patients reported pain or other problems with the implant.

The Stanford researchers changed their approach and developed a retinal implant that actually fits behind the retina. It is solar powered and, since it is wireless, has the potential to cause far fewer complications than previous retinal implants. The procedure to insert the prosthesis is far less invasive than other methods, and it’s reversible. While it’s still early days for this incredible technology, the findings so far suggest that it will change the way we look at retinal implants forever.

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Although visually impaired people have been managing to get along just fine for centuries without a lot of high-tech gadgets, there are still some things that could make their lives easier. The See is a concept from Dinard José de Mata Filho that is meant to make shopping simple, even for people who aren’t able to see what they are shopping for.

The gadget involves two elements: a wrist-mounted barcode scanner and a pair of ear buds. When shopping, the user swipes the scanner over bar codes on products. The internal machinery then translates the coded info into speech and tells the shopper what the product is and, if applicable, the size and color.

There are several questionable parts of this concept, such as how a blind person would find a bar code to begin with and how all of that technology will fit into such a small, thin wrist band. But if those issues could be ignored, the See is actually a smart tool that could stand to help countless visually impaired people get exactly what they go into the store to find.

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Love is blind, but one English man was recently able to see his wife of four years for the first time. After having been blinded more than a decade ago  following an accident at work, Martin Jones underwent a new procedure to restore his sight. The operation involved using a piece of tooth (appropriately it was the canine, or “eye” tooth)  to anchor a new lens held in place with a piece of his own skin. Previous attempts to restore Mr. Jones’ vision had failed, but in 2009 he was given the chance to receive this incredible new treatment at the Sussex Eye Clinic in Brighton, England.

In the procedure, a very small piece of the patient’s own living tooth is removed and a man-made lens put into its core. It is implanted under the eyelid, where tissue grows over it. Then, a tiny flap of skin is removed from the inside of the patient’s mouth and implanted in the eye until it acquires its own blood supply. Finally, the tooth is embedded in the eye socket and the flap of skin secured over it, then a minute hole is cut into the new cornea to let light through. The overall result certainly doesn’t look like a conventional eye, but it has helped to restore vision to over 600 people worldwide. the procedure was recently performed for the first time in the U.S. As for Mr. Jones, the first thing he looked for when the bandages came off was the face of his wife – and he is proud to report that she’s lovely.

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If it can cure color blindness in monkeys, how long will it be before similar cell injections to likewise help humans who cannot see in conventional color ranges? Though not considered fully ready for human testing, this therapy that works on monkey test subjects nonetheless suggests that researchers are headed in the right direction and human trials are hopefully not far in the future.

While no one can say for certain whether or not this technique is the cure for seeing red and green in those people currently unable to, some scientists are already claiming – on the basis of these monkey trials – that it could and should be able to assist the millions of people in the United States alone who have genetic disorders affecting their ability to perceive colors.

Of course, being color blind does not kill, nor does it significantly impact most of the everyday abilities of those individuals who function fine with some form of color blindness. Nonetheless, many who suffer  from this limiting visual impairment wish they could appreciate the full range of sunsets and otherwise differentiate between the same colors in works of art and everyday objects as other individuals not afflicted.

The post Monkey See? Simple Injection Can Cure Color Blindness first appeared on Gajitz.