Intelligent Bus Information System, (I.B.I.S.) should go a long way in ensuring travel is easier for visually impaired persons. At present, 12 bus stops across the Strathclyde region have been installed with the system.

The three-month pilot will allow vision-impaired bus passengers to use Brailled buttons to listen to the information.

For the first time, the United Nations will be able to print material directly in Braille. The credit goes to a donation of a state-of-the-art printer by the non-profit organisation, Services for the Visually Impaired, (S.V.I.), U.S.A., along with the World Blind Union (W.B.U.).

Harold Snider, Executive Director, S.V.I., said the high-speed, heavy-duty embosser would provide the U.N. with Braille production capacity in all six of the organisation’s official languages.

Visually impaired Elizabeth Goldring is a senior fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (M.I.T.) (U.S.), Centre for Advanced Visual Studies. Her ‘Seeing machine’ allows people with limited vision to see faces of friends, read or study the layouts of buildings they intend to visit.

Engineers at Carnegie Mellon University (C.M.U.) are developing affordable scanning systems to give blind people greater independence in daily activities, such as cooking, grocery shopping or riding a bus.

"The single biggest thing to a blind person is to have independence, to never have to ask a sighted person for assistance," said project leader Priya Narasimhan, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering. Narasimhan's venture is called ‘Trinetra’, a Sanskrit word referring to the powerful third eye of the Hindu god,’Shiva’.

‘Talk 64’, the first-of-its kind talking software will make playing the game of chess for visually impaired players much easier and simpler.

Talk 64 has a distinct audio feature. It will keep players informed about all the moves in the game and will also interact with the player continuously. Another interesting feature attached to the speech module of the software is its synthesizer. With the help of the synthesizer the voice (male or female), rate and volume of speech can be regulated.

He listens to audio cassettes and dictates his sermons and notes on tape. His entire sermon is done by memory and he does not use any notes. He knows very little Braille.Ronnie Tollette is the new minister for the Church of Christ (Fallon, Nevada, U.S.) and he is blind. He is also hearing impaired, he wears aids for assistance.

"I ask people in the congregation ahead of time to read a scripture from the Bible if I haven't been able to memorize it ahead of time," said Tollette.

Injections of the drug ‘Lucentis’ can improve sight in people with a particular form of retina degeneration.

A study in the New England Journal of Medicine (U.K.) found that the drug slowed vision loss in around nine out of 10 patients. And, one in three had improved vision.

About 95% patients with wet macular degeneration (A.M.D.) maintain their baseline vision whilst on treatment with Lucentis. About one-third patients gain vision and the effect is sustained over the course of Lucentis treatment (1 to 2 years).

The award winning project aims to develop a system that enables blind and visually impaired persons to read by means of a mobile device. The device reads out various information displays for everyday use such as microwave, advertising or transport information.

The panel of experts, on judging the ‘ONCE International R&D Award’, underlined that the project aimed to meet an important need for visually impaired persons, namely, easy access to information. Experts felt that the novel device can become a highly useful tool in daily life.

The ministry of information technology has embarked on a programme to provide job-oriented training in information technology (I.T.) to visually impaired students. The programme will include training for jobs at call centres.