The blind can see through this 'Seeing Machine'

A legally blind poet at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has designed a “seeing machine” that allows people with limited vision to see faces of friends, read or study the layouts of buildings they intend to visit.

The device, which MIT estimates costs about $4,000 to manufacture, plugs into a personal computer and uses light-emitting diodes to project selected images into a person’s eye, allowing visually impaired users to see words or pictures.

“The advantage of this kind of display is there’s no extraneous stuff in your peripheral vision that gets in the way,” Elizabeth Goldring, who has published three volumes of poetry, said in an interview. “The image gets projected right onto the retina.”

The device, which Goldring calls a "seeing machine," is housed in a box that measures about 12 inches by 6 inches by 6 inches.

A device such as this could open doors to new, unfamiliar places, which the visually challenged are often terrified of visiting, Goldring said.


Fewer than 10 percent of the blind read Braille, making it difficult to find their way in unfamiliar places, and directions from well-meaning bystanders are often inaccurate.

"If you are visually challenged, if you see something once using the machine, you remember," Goldring said.