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Clever 7 year old boy helps to bring Braille labels to grocery stores starting with Whole Foods Market in Thousand Oaks, CA & Newtonville, MA.
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The American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) and the National Association for Parents of Children with Visual Impairments (NAPVI) today announced the launch of an innovative social network for parents and caregivers of visually impaired children. FamilyFriends is the latest extension of AFB’s web community, FamilyConnect. For the last three years, visitors to www.familyconnect.org have connected with other families through message boards and have explored resources related to raising children with visual impairments. The National Federation of the Blind (NFB), the oldest and largest organization of blind people in the nation, announced today that Mark Anthony Riccobono, a blind executive who directs technology, research, and education programs for the organization, will be the first blind individual to drive a street vehicle in public. Mr. Riccobono will be behind the wheel of a Ford Escape hybrid equipped with nonvisual technology allowing a blind person to drive it independently as part of a historic demonstration scheduled during pre-race activities leading up to the Rolex 24 at the Daytona International Speedway. Scientists have developed an eye implant that allowed three blind patients to see shapes and objects within days of treatment in a trial and say the device could become routine for some kinds of blindness in five years. Experts described the study results as phenomenal and said the device, developed by German researchers, could eventually change the lives of up to 200,000 people worldwide who suffer from blindness due to a degenerative eye disease called retinitis pigmentosa. Vanda Pharmaceuticals Conducting Clinical Trials for Blindness and Non-24-Hour Sleep Wake Disorder. If you want to participate in the survey, please call toll-free 1-877-708-1936 Monday-Friday between 9:00 AM and 5:00 PM ET. Congratulations! BrailleWorks Blog was determined to be one of the best blogs to exude overall brilliance in 2010. And so, it has received our 2010 Top 30 Vision Impaired Blogs Award. The ratings are compared, and awards are given out to blogs in the 99% percentile (meaning only the top 1% of blogs receive awards). Designer Noam Klopper is aiming to help people who are blind or visually impaired find a more simple way to get around by introducing the Visually Impaired Assistant (VIA). The “VIA” Visually Impaired Assistant is a pair of hand-centric devices to make the day of a visually impaired person a whole lot easier. Since the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Hines VA Hospital has hosted 65 members of the armed forces who served in Iraq and Afghanistan – more than any of the nine other VA blind centers across the country. Since 2005, the influx has more than doubled the number of blind or visually impaired 20- to 39-year-olds who stay for weeks at a time or longer to learn important survival skills, from operating a stove to walking unfamiliar streets, such as the stretch in downtown Forest Park. “It gives individuals the self-esteem and confidence to take back their lives,” said Gerald Schutter, chief of the center. It’s not always easy for blind or visually impaired people to use mobile phones, but designer Nikko van Stolk has come up with a concept phone that might be able to solve the problem, dubbed the Tactile. The National Federation of the Blind’s Blind Driver Challenge-an innovative effort to create a nonvisual interface that empowers a blind person to operate an automobile-received the 2010 Application of the Year Award at the National Instruments Graphical System Design Achievement Awards ceremony held during the NIWeek annual conference in Austin, Texas. In response to a challenge issued by the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) , students and researchers at Virginia Tech – using National Instruments (NI) technology – developed a semi-autonomous vehicle that allows a blind driver to successfully navigate, control speed, and avoid collision while traversing a closed driving course. |
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