Implant Translates Written Words To Braille, Right On the Retina 75
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."
Re:Why not just use the letter? (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.
Re:Why not just use the letter? (Score:5, 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.
Re:Another Great Slashdot Summary (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