MetaFilter posts tagged with blindness

Man recovers vision after 12 years by implanting tooth in eye

scrutiny — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 22:21:06 -0800

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. The specific surgery is called Osteo-Odonto-Keratoprosthesis and was first pioneered in Italy in 1963. Essentially, a tooth and a small portion of the jaw is removed from the patient. A small hole is drilled into the tooth and a lens is attached inside. The tooth construct is implanted in the cheek to allow it develop a blood supply, and then later is implanted into the eye. Despite how unwieldy this procedure seems, it has a shockingly high success rate over time. In this survey of 181 patients, 85% retained functional use of their eye after 18 years, with approximately 55% retaining the best postoperative functionality.

Bringing New Meaning to 'Flogging the Bishop'

Navelgazer — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 16:54:09 -0800

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)

"People ask me how I compose my shots," she laughs, "Well, I don't."

Astro Zombie — Mon, 11 May 2009 12:37:15 -0800

Photographs by Blind Photographers.

At least I got the number right

aerotive — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 20:51:05 -0800

An interesting test with a laudable goal. Youtube video about change blindness, academic paper (PDF) about it.

Visually impaired photographers

mediareport — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 22:33:57 -0800

"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]

hearing is seeing

flapjax at midnite — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 08:25:51 -0800

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.

Seeing is not always believing.

cenoxo — Sat, 17 Jun 2006 01:59:45 -0800

'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.)

Warnings

tellurian — Wed, 17 May 2006 19:21:52 -0800

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.

A good place for a blind date

mr_crash_davis — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 09:28:04 -0800

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".

MIT researchers play Borg God

rob511 — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 02:36:30 -0800

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.)

Porn blindness

gottabefunky — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 10:57:35 -0800

Porn can make you go blind. Kinda.

James Burns' detached retina

mathowie — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 10:40:22 -0800

Detached a gorgeous comic based on the author's experiences with having a detached retina and going through eye surgery.

motion induced blindness

elemenopee — Mon, 18 Apr 2005 11:11:41 -0800

Motion induced blindess. Be sure to check out the other really cool stuff

Blind student earns M.D.

bicyclingfool — Sun, 03 Apr 2005 12:48:08 -0800

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.]

Stop reading this. Look away. No, really!

soyjoy — Tue, 16 Nov 2004 13:58:19 -0800

MetaFilter: Stop it or you'll go blind.
Heavy computer users risk glaucoma - Toho University study.

The UN shedding light on problems

mathowie — Thu, 15 Jul 2004 15:07:49 -0800

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.

The gift of sight

grahamwell — Tue, 26 Aug 2003 12:54:32 -0800

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]

and the blind could see

The Jesse Helms — Thu, 08 May 2003 12:59:00 -0800

'Bionic eye' breakthrough can allow the blind to see. One by one the miracles of Jesus are replaced by science.

GriffX — Wed, 14 Aug 2002 14:19:49 -0800

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.

JISH — Wed, 19 Dec 2001 11:01:41 -0800

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.

crunchland — Sat, 13 Jan 2001 20:15:29 -0800

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...

mathowie — Thu, 04 Nov 1999 16:32:24 -0800

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.