Recently, a man's sight was returned to him after losing it for 12 years. How did he do it? Surgeons drilled a hole through one of his canines, put a lens in it, and implanted the construct in his eye. [more inside]
posted by scrutiny on Jul 18, 2009 - 65 comments

Does it cause hairy palms? (No, that is a myth.) Will it make you go blind? (No, though zinc deficiency can be detrimental to one's vision, and semen contains a small amount of zinc.) Are you going to hell for it? (Maybe, maybe not.) But what if it helps with conception? (well, the men doing it, anyway)
posted by Navelgazer on Jul 9, 2009 - 20 comments

Photographs by Blind Photographers.
posted by Astro Zombie on May 11, 2009 - 26 comments

An interesting test with a laudable goal. [more inside]
posted by aerotive on Mar 19, 2008 - 45 comments

"I'm photography's degree zero." Evgen Bavcar takes interesting photos despite being blind. "Naturally there are certain adjustments I have made to the camera" [quicktime]. He's also far from alone. [first link via the Athanasius Kircher Society] [more inside]
posted by mediareport on Jan 28, 2007 - 23 comments

Echolocation : bats use it. So do whales and dolphins. And humans? The 14-year-old profiled here and here is using it. Learn more about how blind people are employing perception and processing of the auditory environment: where words like flash and tags have an altogether different meaning.
posted by flapjax at midnite on Aug 21, 2006 - 28 comments

'Twas blind, but now I see? — Virgil surgically regained his sight after nearly 50 years of blindness: "On the day he returned home after the bandages were removed, his house and its contents were unintelligible to him, and he had to be led up the garden path, led through the house, led into each room, and introduced to each chair." In the end, he and others like him [PDF] would have rather stayed in the Country of the Blind. (A happier ending was the more recent case of Mike Mays, previously posted here.)
posted by cenoxo on Jun 17, 2006 - 19 comments

The Australian cigarette health warnings have pretty much filtered down to every retail packet that's bought now. They're pretty gruesome and some smoking acquaintances cover them up with stickers. I thought I'd have a look around and see what other countries warnings were like. None of them were pulling any punches except for Uruguay.
posted by tellurian on May 17, 2006 - 118 comments

At Dans Le Noir ? you can "experience the unique interaction between clientele and guides as your food and wine are served in total darkness". Is it really a pitch-black dining room? "Yes it is ! The room where the dinner takes place is completely dark! We aren't used to completely dark environment since you hardly find this level of darkness in daily life as, we are used to small rays of light from the streetlights or moonlight but in the Dans le Noir ? restaurant there is no light at all!" Worried about going to the loo? Don't be, because "the toilets are fully lit".
posted by mr_crash_davis on Mar 17, 2006 - 52 comments

New hope for blind hamsters. According to the Guardian, scientists at MIT have repaired brain damage and restored eyesight to rodents using nanotechnology. In the study, minute particles were injected into damaged parts of the brain, and subsequently arranged themselves into a "scaffold" gel throughout the damaged area. The scaffold allowed severed nerves to regrow and form new connections. 75% of test animals' injuries were improved with the new technique. (The article did not note if the test subjects offered any resistance to the therapeutic measures.)
posted by rob511 on Mar 14, 2006 - 18 comments

Porn can make you go blind. Kinda.
posted by gottabefunky on Aug 22, 2005 - 40 comments

Detached a gorgeous comic based on the author's experiences with having a detached retina and going through eye surgery.
posted by mathowie on Jun 30, 2005 - 23 comments

Motion induced blindess. Be sure to check out the other really cool stuff
posted by elemenopee on Apr 18, 2005 - 20 comments

Blind student earns M.D. A fascinating article about a guy who overcame innumerable obstacles, not the least of which was people's preconceived notions about what a visually impaired person is capable of. [via linkfilter.]
posted by bicyclingfool on Apr 3, 2005 - 21 comments

MetaFilter: Stop it or you'll go blind.
Heavy computer users risk glaucoma - Toho University study.
posted by soyjoy on Nov 16, 2004 - 21 comments

The UN recently posted a list of the ten stories they wished the world knew more about. One of them is about trying to ensure proper care and equal treatment to persons with disabilities in other countries. Unrelated to the UN, but to the point, this photojournalist's images of preventable blindness in Asia connects the faces of those affected to the issue.
posted by mathowie on Jul 15, 2004 - 9 comments

The gift of sight is easy to take for granted. Not for Mike May, blinded in infancy, Mike had partial vision restored at the age of 43. This is his journal, written with infectious delight for his new gift and documenting the unexpected problems that the miracle brings. There's much, much more to vision than just the data and Mike is an unprecedented opportunity to better understand how perception works. [via the Guardian and previously mentioned here]
posted by grahamwell on Aug 26, 2003 - 14 comments

'Bionic eye' breakthrough can allow the blind to see. One by one the miracles of Jesus are replaced by science.
posted by The Jesse Helms on May 8, 2003 - 15 comments

Virtual light - "...the wires plug into Patient Alpha's head like a pair of headphones plug into a stereo. The actual connection is metallic and circular, like a common washer. So seamless is the integration that the skin appears to simply stop being skin and start being steel." Cameras that jack into a blind man's brain, allowing him to 'see' may soon be here.
posted by GriffX on Aug 14, 2002 - 23 comments

Sightless dining. The world of the sightless is a world I don't often explore. In high school, I had two classmates who were brothers and both sightless. I was amazed at the "tricks" they used to cope in day-to-day tasks we take for granted. Dining at Blindekuh (Swiss German for blind man's bluff), where you eat in complete darkness, would be quite an 'eye-popping' experience. There's a four month waiting list for a table.
posted by JISH on Dec 19, 2001 - 8 comments

North Dakota Blind man gets weapons permit : FARGO, N.D. (AP) - Carey McWilliams has a concealed weapons permit from the state of North Dakota and isn't afraid to use a gun - even though he's blind...
posted by crunchland on Jan 13, 2001 - 14 comments

The BBC, working with the Royal National Institute for the Blind, has created a perl script that reparses a page, stripping out the text from tables and reorganizing it on the fly. It creates a pretty good visually impaired-friendly version of your pages instantly. I don't know how well it does on complex page layouts, but compare the BBC News site in its typical state to the parsed 'text-only' version, and you can see they are pretty close in terms of content.
posted by mathowie on Nov 4, 1999 - 0 comments