EYEBALLING BRAILLE

Retinal prosthetics can help some blind people make out large letters, but the process depends on a camera mounted on glasses and lacks sufficient resolution for real reading. Now researchers have developed a faster way for the blind to read text—by directly stimulating the retina.
The technology, developed at Second Sight Medical Products of Sylmar, Calif., and reported in Frontiers in Neuroprosthetics, sends Braille patterns to a grid of 60 electrodes attached to the retina, the tissue lining the inner surface of the eye. A patient with the electrodes correctly identified 70% of words with four letters. Software could someday send Braille patterns directly from a computer or e-reader.