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Show HELP FOR THE NEARLY BLIND. In addi- SLsi lEESilSf.HC;i Mass. It consists of a reading unit that resembles a tabletop copying device and a small keyboard. When a user places a printed page face down on the unit's glass top, a camera scans it line by line, converting light into electronic signals much like a photocopier. A miniature computer groups letters into words, determines how they should be pronounced according to a preset program, then produces speech sounds, enunciating words into sentences with stresses and pauses in a metallic but understandable voice at a rate of about 150 words a minute. At the push of a button, the user can repeat or skip passages, or mark a point on the page he wants to come back to later. Corrects tunnel vision At the University of Utah, a blind volunteer "sees" white pattern, using small TV camera and computer to stimulate the electrodes implanted in his brain. Further development seen Half a dozen of the machines have been built for practical testing with results in the Perkins promising School for the Blind, West Virginia Rehabilitation Center, Boston school system and elsewhere. At this stage, the cost of a machine is $50,000. But, with further development and volume production, it's expected to sell for about $5000 within a few years and eventually to be as portable as a briefcase. TALKING CALCULATOR. In 1976, a hand-helbattery-powere- d calculator that talks was chosen as one of the most significant new products of the year by Industrial Research magazine. Called Speech Plus and developed by Telesensory Systems, makers of the the $395 machine, weighing 17 ounces and measuring 1 Va" x 4V2" x 7, can add, subtract, multiply, divide, subtotal, do square root and percentage calculations. Its numeric keys are arn ranged like a phone because the blind are more familiar with this configuration. And the device lets the operator hear every key he presses in a clear machine voice so he knows he is making no mistakes as he goes along. ELECTRONIC EYES. Two systems now under development could hold even greater promise for the sightless. ll Institute of At the Visual Sciences, Pacific Medical Center, and San Francisco, Dr. Paul Bach-y-Ria research team are working with a Tactile Vision Substitution System (TVSS). TV TVSS uses a tiny, battery-powere- d camera worn in the frame of a pair of glasses which picks up images, serving much like the lens of the eye. The camera transmits visual images to an elastic garment that fits over the abdomen and has sewn into it more than 1000 tiny electrodes. As images from the camera, translated into electrical impulses, activate the electrodes, the wearer feels vibrations on his skin d, Op-taco- n, push-butto- Smith-Kettlewe- ta 17, tion to the totally blind, half a million Americans are legally blind, with 20200 visual acuity or with normal acuity but field of vision sharply restricted to 20 degrees or less. Effective new devices to help them in parare coming out of laboratories ticular, from the nonprofit National Institute for Rehabilitation Engineering (NIRE) in Pompton Lakes, N.J. There, a team of ophthalmologists, optometrists and engineers develops means for individual patients to make best use of their remaining sight. the pattern of the original images; so the skin, in effect, serves somewhat in the same way as the retina of the eye. Wearers of the experimental system in have quickly learned to recognize drinking glasses, telephones and other common objects and to wend their way through tables, chairs and other obstructions in a room. A blind psychologist at the institute can move around obstacles at the rate of two feet a second, far faster than with a cane. Aid in electronics work The institute team also developed a similar stationary system in which the camera is attached to a microscope and, instead of wearing an electrode pack, the user presses his abdomen against a bench-mountelectrode array. Using the system, one man is able to assemble small components at an electronics plant as quickly and accurately as sighted workers. The stationary system may become available for wide use within a year or two; the portable system, still being refined, may become available a few years after that. In an entirely different approach, Dr. William Dobelle and a research team at the University of Utah's Institute for Biomedical Engineering are working toward a system which only a few years ago would have seemed inconceivable: one that would stimulate visual centers in the brain to let the blind see. In experiments with a volunteer, blind from a gunshot accident, they have implanted a plastic strip with an array of electrodes against the visual cortex at the rear of the brain, with wires emerging through the skin above and behind an ear. As electrical signals reach the electrodes, they're seen as spots of light, or with phosphenes. In one experiment electrodes connected to a TV' camera ed which sent images to a computer to be simplified and then transmitted as electrical impulses the volunteer could see horizontal and vertical lines in the pattern of phosphenes. In another experiment, with the system hooked up to transmit Braille images, he could read words in phosphene form five times faster than with his fingertips. Dobelle and his colleagues foresee a miniature system that the blind could wear and use constantly. It would consist of a small camera implanted in an eye socket. The camera would transmit light electronically to a tiny computer built into an eyeglass frame which would, in turn, translate the light into electrical impulses to be sent to the implanted electrodes in the visual cortex. With such a system, a wearer could perceive people and objects as well as read. Not long ago, a man was referred to NIRE because an eye disease, retinitis pigmentosa, had left him with tunnel vision so severe that he retained only two degrees of the normal visual field, causing him to bump into objects and restricting his activities. The institute's staff designed and built for him "field expander glasses" mounted on a conventional eyeglass frame. By looking alternately through the regular lens and the field expander, he can now see a full 180 degrees. The field exvipander glasses now offer sion, too, for people blind in one eye n or with in each eye as the result of brain injury or stroke. At NIRE, special wide-angl- e magnifying telescopic spectacles in bifocal form are made for people with impaired central vision or poor visual sharpness, enabling them to see clearly at a distance and drive a car again. Strong reading spectacles with long working distances are made to help people who have been able to read only by holding print to the face. With the spectacles, they can read at a comfortable distance of 10 to 14 inches. full-fie- half-visio- Night- - and in one eye. A pair is now worn by Israel's Gen. Moshe Dayan. cross-visio- n aids Miniaturized electronic devices that can be held in the hand or worn on the head are helping people unable to see adequately in dim light. Among the remarkable achievements of NIRE are cross-visio- n glasses for people blind in one eye. Through technical legerdemain, the glasses provide y vision by detecting images on the blind side and conveying them to the brain through the normal optic pathways on the sighted side without causing double vision or confusion. One of those wearing the glasses is Israel's Gen. Moshe Dayan, who never expected to regain the ability to see on his left side. Nothing can ever take the place of the priceless gift of normal sight. But increasingly now technological developments promise to help many of the partly sighted and the totally blind to gain, literally, a new outlook on the world. full-fiel- d, people blind ld high-acuit- |