Free Republic

FRESNO, Calif. -- An experimental device that uses the tongue instead of the eyes to "see" could be on the market next year, and a blind Fresno, Calif., teen hopes to be among the first to take one home. Researchers say their BrainPort device does not replace the sense of sight, but lets the blind perceive images, making it easier for them to navigate their surroundings. One group they foresee benefiting: Troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan who are blind because of brain injuries. BrainPort consists of a tiny digital camera mounted on sunglasses. The camera is attached by a...

Surror Yousif Nasar, president of the Basrah Blind Association, recently demonstrated talking software to a member of his association. With this technology, BBA members can now email and surf the Internet. The U. S. State Department's Basrah Provincial Reconstruction Team provided the software after hearing of the association’s needs. Photo courtesy of Multi-National Division – South. BASRAH — Under the former regime, many elements of civil society were neglected here, including the handicapped. Upon hearing of the needs of the Basrah Blind Association, the U.S. State Department's Provincial Reconstruction Team asked how it might help. "It's an honor to meet...

Irish ophthamologists are warning of a wave of blindness affecting religious pilgrims who are being encouraged to stare at the sun. The incidents are taking place at the Knock shrine in County Mayo in western Ireland. For the past 130 years, pilgrims have visited the holy site, hoping to see visions of the Virgin Mary. In recent months, a new series of visions has drawn thousands of visitors to the shrine on days prescribed by a clairvoyant named Joe Coleman Ten thousand gathered in early November when Coleman told them: "The Rosary is to be said at 3 p.m. and...

Gene Therapy Transforms Eyesight Of 12 People With Rare Visual Defect A single injection in a patient's eye brings 'astounding' results. The findings may offer hope for those with macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa. Thomas H. Maugh II October 24, 2009 Pennsylvania researchers using gene therapy have made significant improvements in vision in 12 patients with a rare inherited visual defect, a finding that suggests it may be possible to produce similar improvements in a much larger number of patients with retinitis pigmentosa and macular degeneration. The team last year reported success with three adult patients, an achievement that was...

CHICAGO -- If you're looking for somebody to cheer for during Sunday's marathon, Steve Baskis is your man. The 23-year-old Iraq veteran lost his sight last year when a roadside bomb exploded next to the vehicle he was driving. One of his best friends, Victor Cota, was just a few feet away from him at the time and lost his life. Instead of falling apart, though, Baskis did exactly the opposite. He needed an outlet for competitiveness and he wanted to show people that life doesn't end just because you lose your vision. After numerous surgeries to repair his injuries,...

Blindness first began creeping up on Barbara Campbell when she was a teenager, and by her late 30s, her eye disease had stolen what was left of her sight. Reliant on a talking computer for reading and a cane for navigating New York City, where she lives and works, Ms. Campbell, now 56, would have been thrilled to see something. Anything. Now, as part of a striking experiment, she can. So far, she can detect burners on her stove when making a grilled cheese, her mirror frame, and whether her computer monitor is on. She is beginning an intensive three-year...

A legally blind woman has bagged a bear in the Upper Peninsula.Villa tells WLUC-TV her "limited sight" only allows her to "see the difference between light and dark" and "silhouettes of people."

WASHINGTON – If you think your kids spend a little too much time on their laptops, take heart: Michelle Obama has the same problem. The first lady made the rueful revelation as she feted the nation's top innovators and designers in fields as diverse as architecture, technology, fashion, and communications — winners of the annual National Design awards — at an East Room luncheon Friday. "What would we do without our laptops?" asked Mrs. Obama, addressing one of the winners, Bill Moggridge, who designed the world's first laptop. "My kids would die," she said to laughter. "They'd be — they...

A driver told a blind cancer sufferer to get off his bus when a woman and her children became hysterical at the sight of his guide dog. George Herridge, 71, told how the mum flew into a rage and shouted at him in a foreign language. A passenger explained she wanted him to get off the bus during the incident on May 20. Mr Herridge, from Tern Close, Tilehurst, said: “Her child was kicking and screaming and someone off the bus told me her child was frightened of my dog. The driver said, ‘Look mate, can’t you get off?’ “I...

Blind photography: the very concept sounds like an oxymoron. But an intriguing and often striking exhibition of photographs in Riverside, California, argues that it emanates from the core of contemporary art. The show "Sight Unseen," at the California Museum of Photography until Aug. 29, features everything from underwater scenes off Catalina Island, transvestites in New Orleans and Braille-enhanced black-and-whites as well as portraits, nudes, landscapes, travel shots, abstracts, collages, and everything else you might expect from a "sighted" photographer. Except the subtext and context is blindness: the photographers are legally blind, some born without sight or with limited vision, and...

A BLIND INTERNATIONAL interpreter who says he was dragged off a Belgium-bound flight, arrested and held in custody in Philadelphia for hours without food or water faces an arraignment Thursday. His crime: He questioned why his U.S. Airways flight was delayed nearly two hours. Nicola Cantisani, 61, of Brussels, Belgium, a professional translator who has been blind since birth, was charged with resisting arrest and disorderly conduct, police said. "This is taking airplane security to a new and ridiculous level," said his attorney, A. Charles Peruto Jr. "It's pretty crazy." Cantisani and his wife, Paola, were returning to Brussels April...

FENTON, Mo. - A legally blind man was credited with saving a woman after authorities said a 45-year-old man broke into her apartment on Saturday night. Authorities said the man, a convicted rapist, was waiting for the woman to return home from work. A neighbor who asked to be identified only as Jerry heard noises coming from the apartment. Jerry is blind in his left eye and has about 25 percent vision in his right eye. Jerry told KTVI-TV that he went to the apartment and kicked open the door, surprising the would-be attacker, who locked the door. The woman...

TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- Ameneh Bahrami is certain that one day she'll meet someone, fall in love and get married. But when her wedding day comes, her husband won't see her eyes, and she won't see her husband. Bahrami is blind, the victim of an acid attack by a spurned suitor. If she gets her way, her attacker will suffer the same fate. The 31-year-old Iranian is demanding the ancient punishment of "an eye for an eye," and, in accordance with Islamic law, she wants to blind Majid Movahedi, the man who blinded her. ...

Aquanetta Gordon knew that her remarkable son's life on Earth soon would be over. "You can let go," she told him. "You can go home. When you get to heaven, tell Jesus to save that spot right next to you. That's for your mother." Hours later, Ben Underwood, the blind Elk Grove teenager who dazzled people all over the world with his ability to "see" with sound, died at home with his family surrounding him. Ben would have turned 17 on Monday. Instead, friends and relatives will be gathering on that day for his funeral. The service is scheduled for...

Chances are you've seen a blind person accompanied by a guide dog. But what about a guide horse, a service parrot or a monkey trained to help an agoraphobic? These are just a few of the nontraditional service animals that are used across the country to help people with disabilities and psychological disorders. As their uses are expanding, however, the government is considering a proposal that would limit the definition of "service animal" to "a dog or other common domestic animal."

Guide Horses have shown great promise as a mobility option, and people who have tried Guide Horses report that the Guide Horses perform exceptionally well at keeping their person safe. These friendly horses provide an experimental alternative mobility option for blind people. People who have tried Guide Horses report that the horses demonstrate excellent judgment and are not easily distracted by crowds and people.

Blind band will be Rose Parade's first Tuesday, October 21, 2008 3:12 AM By Jennifer Smith Richards THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH The entire student body had been herded into the gym to sing The Star-Spangled Banner, which was video- recorded for a school project. That was pretty cool, in itself -- several of the roughly 120 students at the Ohio State School for the Blind have perfect pitch, so it wasn't your average school-choir rendition. What happened next was even cooler: Music director Carol Agler's cell phone rang and the crowd went quiet. She held the microphone to the phone's earpiece...

She went to a Brooklyn emergency room suffering from what she thought was just a kidney stone, but a medical nightmare left her partly blind and a quadruple amputee. Tabitha Mullings claims doctors at Brooklyn Hospital Center failed to diagnose an infection that has literally eaten her alive. RELATED: BOY WITH GIANT LIMB GIVEN $200G FIXUP "Sometimes I can't believe it's me laying here," the mother of three told the Daily News Wednesday from her bed in the very hospital she blames for her ravaged body.  Wiping tears with a bandaged stump, Mullings struggled to explain how in a...

The human mind can be mystifying in its capacity to accommodate both disability and genius in the same person, as 60 Minutes found in a little boy named Rex. Rex was born blind, with brain damage so severe it looked as though he would never walk, talk, or do much of anything. And yet he has a talent few of us can imagine. To understand Rex’s brain would be to unlock mysteries of language, memory, and music. Correspondent Lesley Stahl has followed Rex and his mother, Cathleen, for several years now; she first met them in 2003.

Reporting from Sacramento -- California has often been tagged as the "nanny state" for passing laws that some people say interfere with citizens' lives. But now it has earned the label for a whole different reason, thanks to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Republican governor announced this week that he had appointed a nanny -- his own children's nanny, in fact -- as a part-time state regulator on the Board of Guide Dogs for the Blind. Lindsay Ann Schnaidt, 32, a Democrat from Hermosa Beach who has worked for the Schwarzenegger family for seven years, will be paid $100 a day...

Four Australian teenagers were charged Thursday with attacking an almost blind greater flamingo that is believed to be the oldest bird of its kind in the world, police and zoo officials said. The flamingo's head and beak were injured and it was bleeding from an eye after the attack at Adelaide Zoo that left it in a critical condition, zoo staff said. "The bird arrived at the zoo in 1933 and was a mature bird at that stage," a spokeswoman for the zoo told AFP. "So although we don't know it's exact age it is at least 75 years old...

After months of work by The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association and The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), guide dog Vargo has become the first guide dog in the UK to enter a mosque after the Islamic Shari’ah Council issued a historic fatwa11 stating “a blind person, in the light of Shariah Law, will be allowed to keep a guide dog to help him and if required to take him to the mosque for his prayers2”. In this momentous event today (on Wednesday 24 September), Vargo accompanied his 18-year-old owner Mahomed-Abraar Khatri to his local mosque in Leicester, seen...

ST. PETERSBURG — Before dawn on Wednesday, Virginia Zinn heard a crash. She sighed, peeked out the door and saw a familiar scene. Here we go again, she thought. For at least the seventh time, a vehicle crashed into Zinn's home on 12th Street S. This time it was a school bus. At 6 a.m. The bus, heading west on Ninth Place S — an unpaved 10-foot-wide alley a toe from Zinn's place — struck the overhanging roof of her home as it tried to turn onto 12th Street S. Police estimated the damage at about $800, to be paid...

DAYTON, Ohio (WDTN) - Family members are angry and speaking out after Dayton police used a stun gun on a woman who is blind and suffering from cancer. Police said they were looking for a suspect when they knocked on Denise Harris's door Thursday morning. But according to both police and witnesses, things quickly got out of hand and Harris was tased. "She was able to force herself down on to the floor and not be cooperative, grabbing on to the detective. A taser was dry stunned onto her arm to control her hand movement, then she was cuffed," said...

<p>Moscow, July 14: Dozens of young revellers were blinded by a laser show at a dance and music festival near Moscow last week and doctors fear the damage may be irreparable, the Kommersant daily reported on Monday.</p> <p>"More than 30 people between the ages of 16 and 30 have ended up in hospitals in the capital with the same diagnosis-- damaged retinas - since July 7," the report said, quoting doctors.</p>

A BRITISH airport has advertised for an air traffic controller - and offered those interested an application pack in braille. The website for St Mary's Airport on the Isles of Scilly, off the southwest tip of England, says controllers need to be able to keep a close eye on the changeable weather as their work "is not over-dependent upon very costly and sophisticated electronic equipment". But applicants for the job could still ask for an application pack in large type, braille or audio format, newspapers said. A spokesman for the local council said the wording was included on all job...

iZumi Bio has agreed to license some patents from the J. David Gladstone Institutes as they begin to work together on new adult stem cell technology involved in devising cardiovascular therapies. ReportStem cell transplants were used to restore the sight of six blind patients at a London hospital. StorySome 2,500 delegates attended the recent International Society for Stem Cell Research in Philadelphia. And insiders say that the development of induced pluripotent stem cells has clearly energized the entire field. ReleaseIn a new study regarding age-related diseases, researchers identified two key regulatory pathways that control how well adult stem cells...

The pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has announced that it is funding a new adult stem-cell treatment that could treat diabetes-induced retinal damage, a leading cause of blindness. Forbes Magazine says that Pfizer is funding the creation of a San Diego biotech company named EyeCyte to develop stem-cell treatments for eye diseases. The company will base its work upon Scripps Research Institute ophthalmologist Martin Friedlander’s research involving stem-cells from blood and bone marrow. EyeCyte will receive about $3 million from Pfizer, which in return has the right of first refusal regarding the new company’s products. In animal experiments, adult stem-cells have shown...

WASHINGTON - The U.S. discriminates against blind people by printing paper money that makes it impossible for them to distinguish among the bills’ varying values, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.

DES MOINES, Iowa -- A blind Iowa man scored a perfect 300 game at the Century Lanes bowling alley on Saturday, The Storm Lake Times reported. The Times said Dale Davis, 78, of Alta, called the game "quite a thrill." He rolled 12 back-to-back strikes, the first-ever perfect game at the Century Lanes, The Times reported. Excitement throughout the building grew as the crowd watched Davis roll ball after ball down the lanes. "When I got to the tenth frame, I said ‘Lord, let me throw three more good balls,’ Davis told The Times. Davis had given up his passion...

Kahlua was a sweet pony who gently carried children on his back and was always the first in his pasture to trot up to and greet visitors. On Wednesday his owner was horrified to find the blind pony dead in his pasture in Shenango Township, Mercer County. Large pieces of skin were missing from both back legs, and a bone in one hind leg was broken.

Enlarge ImageSeeing the light.Steven Howarth, 18, a patient in a U.K. gene-therapy trial for blindness, says he is now more comfortable walking home at dusk.Credit: BBC In what eye researchers are hailing as a major advance, gene therapy has partially restored the sight of four young adults born with severe blindness. In two small studies, the patients' ability to sense light improved, and two can now read several lines of an eye chart. All are still legally blind, but the same treatment could potentially prevent this type of blindness in babies. The four patients have a disease called Leber...

The patient was blind. Maguire's hair-thin needle traveled through the "white" of his eye, all the way back to his badly scarred retina, where it would deliver billions of genetically modified viruses. Each virus carried a single gene: the recipe to produce a crucial enzyme that his eye was unable to make on its own. Within weeks, beyond what anyone had predicted, the experiment worked. The young man and two other patients began to regain some vision. The results, reported online today by the New England Journal of Medicine, represent a dramatic advance in the field known as gene therapy,...

Trachoma, a chronic bacterial keratoconjunctivitis, has always been inextricably linked with poverty. It would not even be mentioned in the curricula of many U.S. medical schools today if not for its connection with a common sexually transmitted disease: trachoma is caused by four serovars of Chlamydia trachomatis (A, B, Ba, and C); serovars D through K cause genital tract infection. All strains share a proclivity for epithelial surfaces. The organism is transmitted from eye to eye by hands or towels used on the face; moisture-seeking flies may play a lesser role. The genome of C. trachomatis has been sequenced, revealing...

Noor Taha Najee gives 1st Lt. Michael Kendrick, platoon leader, 2nd Platoon, 1st Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, a goodbye kiss near the end of a March 26 visit to her house in al Buaytha, Iraq. Noor, whose corneas are underdeveloped, has been blind since birth. The Soldiers of 1-30th Inf. Regt. are working with a nongovernmental organization in Los Angeles, the Eye Defects Research Foundation, to get Noor surgery that may provide her with sight. Photo by Sgt. Kevin Stabinsky. FORWARD OPERATING BASE KALSU — Her hands run across his hand, her fingers...

Are hybrid cars too quiet for their own good? Jana Littrell certainly thinks so. Littrell, who is blind, was walking through a bank parking lot in the East Bay town of Albany a year ago when her foot was run over by a Toyota Prius backing out of a parking space. She wasn't injured and the driver apologized effusively, she recalled. But the experience shook her up. "It has definitely put me more on my guard," said Littrell, who teaches Braille to newly blind adults. "But I don't know how much good that's going to do me if I can't...

An archer has achieved a one-in-a-million feat of marksmanship after splitting one arrow with another. What makes the shot even more remarkable is that Tilly Trotter is blind. The 74-year-old grandmother pulled off the shot, known among archers as a "Robin Hood", at a practice session of the Wellington Bowmen in Somerset. Mrs Trotter, who has been an archer for two years at the invitation of granddaughter Charlotte, said: "The second arrow made such a noise going into the back of previous arrow I thought I had hit the ceiling or done some expensive damage. "Then I heard people jumping...

Set against the breathtaking backdrop of the Himalayas, Blindsight follows the gripping adventure of six Tibetan teenagers who set out to climb the 23,000 foot Lhakpa Ri on the north side of Mount Everest. A dangerous journey soon becomes a seemingly impossible challenge made all the more remarkable by the fact that the teenagers are blind. Believed by many Tibetans to be possessed by demons, the children are shunned by their parents, scorned by their villages and rejected by society. Rescued by Sabriye Tenberken - a blind educator and adventurer who established the first school for the blind in Lhasa,...

New York Lt. Gov. David Paterson will assume of the role of governor on Monday. He will be New York's first black and first legally blind governor. And he will be left to clean up a mess left by his predecessor. But Paterson is no stranger to adversity. “(He is) very capable, not withstanding his near sightlessness,” former New York City Mayor Edward Koch recently said. “It’s never impeded his public actions or his personal actions, and he’s really overcome it in an extraordinary way.” Paterson, 53, lost most of his sight as an infant when an infection damaged his...

An Irishman blinded by an explosion two years ago has had his sight restored after doctors inserted his son's tooth in his eye, he said on Wednesday. Bob McNichol, 57, from County Mayo in the west of the country, lost his sight in a freak accident when red-hot liquid aluminium exploded at a re-cycling business in November 2005. "I thought that I was going to be blind for the rest of my life," McNichol told RTE state radio. After doctors in Ireland said there was nothing more they could do, McNichol heard about a miracle operation called Osteo-Odonto-Keratoprosthesis (OOKP) being...

The country's visually impaired can look forward to being able to take a trip to their local cinema in the coming weeks to 'see' one of the first Danish films produced with a special soundtrack that allows them to fully experience the film. The visually impaired version of 'A man comes home', a film by Thomas Vinterberg, premiered to a sold-out show at the Danish Film Institute in Copenhagen last autumn. That success has led DFI and the National Association for the Visually Impaired to show the film in eight cities in January and early February. Films for the visually...

As you may recall Zahrra's journey here started more than a year ago when a Northwoods man (SFC Kempen) who was stationed in Iraq was throwing candy to children and he noticed that Zahrra wasn't able to see the treats falling right in front of her. Today at Aspirus Wausau Zahrra had her second corneal transplant.

ANTWERP, Belgium: Sacha van Loo, 36, is not your typical cop. He wields a white cane instead of a gun. And from the purr of an engine on a wiretap, he can discern whether a suspect is driving a Peugeot, a Honda or a Mercedes. Van Loo is one of Europe's newest weapons in the global fight against terrorism and organized crime: a blind Sherlock Holmes, whose disability allows him to spot clues sighted detectives don't see. "Being blind has forced me to develop my other senses, and my power as a detective rests in my ears," he said from...

Researchers at the University of Warwick have uncovered a crucial signal that switches on eye development. This discovery will greatly assist researchers looking at stem cells connected to eye development and opens up an avenue of research that could eventually lead to an “eye in a dish”. The University of Warwick research team led by Professor Nick Dale and Professor Elizabeth Jones from the University of Warwick’s Biological Sciences Department have published their work today, 25th October 2007, in Nature in a paper entitled Purine-mediated signaling triggers eye development. The researchers were exploring whether release of ATP (an important signaling...

A Blind Eye to Prevention By DIANA FURCHTGOTT-ROTH October 22, 2007 Manhattan resident Debora Grobman, a former federal prosecutor and white-collar criminal defense lawyer, had no idea that she was gradually going blind. But in 2006 a routine eye exam revealed that she was suffering from glaucoma, a degenerative eye disease. Her future vision is now dependent on laser surgery — she had one operation last year and may have another — and a daily regimen of five different types of eye drops. Last week Ms. Grobman spoke at a Washington D.C. conference sponsored by the Glaucoma Foundation and the...

Texas Parks and Wildlife commissioners Thursday gave their approval to regulations that will allow blind and visually impaired hunters to use laser pointing devices on guns and bows. Hunters will have to carry with them a doctor's statement that they meet the state's level of impairment and also be accompanied by a licensed hunter at least 13 years old and certified in hunter education. The vote Thursday was simply the commission's follow-up on the Texas Legislature's vote this year to allow the laser pointing devices. The change will be in effect for the coming hunting seasons. Basically, the hunter who...

WACO, Tex., Aug. 27 — Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, whose tenure has been marred by controversy and accusations of perjury before Congress, has resigned. A senior administration official said he would announce the decision later this morning in Washington. Mr. Gonzales, who had rebuffed calls for his resignation, submitted his to President Bush by telephone on Friday, the official said. His decision was not announced immediately announced, the official added, until after the president invited him and his wife to lunch at his ranch near here. Mr. Bush has not yet chosen a replacement but will not leave the...

A blind Vancouver man who was shunned by a taxi driver who didn't want a guide dog in his cab has reached a $2,500 settlement with North Shore Taxi. Bruce Gilmour, 49, had called a cab from a West Vancouver coffee shop after a day of skiing in November 2006. But North Shore Taxi driver Behzad Saidy, a Muslim, refused to transport Gilmour and his golden retriever Arden, saying his religion prevents him from associating with dogs. Gilmour, who has been blind for 30 years, filed a human rights complaint, alleging discrimination.

The blue-masked man bends forward in his rolling chair, back stiff, eyes pressed to microscope. On his surgical table lies a woman wrapped in blue like a package, except for naked right eye, lid peeled back, pupil widely dilated, bathed in light. He is busy with two slender instruments. One obliterates a lens, opaque as butter. The other suctions out milky debris. He slips a tube into the same incision and deposits a folded thing that spreads like the wing of a moth. The folded thing becomes a clear lens. It all takes five minutes. The woman sees again. The...

Blind people are whizzes at remembering things in the right order, scientists now find. In the absence of vision, the world is experienced as sequences, explained neurobiologist Ehud Zohary of Hebrew University in Jerusalem. For instance, to identify otherwise indistinguishable objects, such as different brands of yogurt that vary only in their labeling, the blind typically place objects in arrangements of their own making and give mental tags for each of them, such as “the second item on the left.” Zohary and his colleagues reasoned that since the blind constantly use memory strategies to remember things are, that “practice makes...