Seeing with Sound

As most of my readers know I normally don't focus on a particular aspect of a specific disability. However while I was surfing around the net recently I stumbled onto what I suspect might be a new disability tool that might benefit many of my regulars. The reality is that many of you might be having significant difficulties with your vision due to decreasing sight ability as a sign of aging or as a complication of some other chronic medical condition. You may feel that your ability to continue using the net for socialization, enjoyment, educational purposes or just plan fun might be hindered by this additional difficulty. Well fortunately for many of you facing this dilemna there is a new hardware solution coming out of the Netherlands.

The principal behind this technology is to convert images to sound, then playing the sound images to the sight impaired end user. I suspect there might be a major learning curve adapting to this technology but nevertheless it is still an interesting concept that some of you might feel worth exploring. Fortunately they allow you to download sample's of this technology to your home computer, therefore allowing you the opportunity to test it before committing yourself further. While reviewing the Seeing with Sound site I strongly suspect that this technology is still in a multiple level testing phase.

However if you either have a web camera or access to one and stereo headphones they have several samples and a trail version of the software that you may download onto your computer. They even provide a training ground of 3D virtual environments for you to test the software on their site.

Hopefully this information will be of some major benefit to some of my readers out there. If you do take the time to test this new technology I hope you will return and give the rest of us some feedback so we may learn from your experiences!

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