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Geordi La Forge's Visor?

A project log for BlindSight

Creating an app that e-NABLEs blind and visually impaired people to use cell phones and tablets.

les-hallLes Hall 05/11/2017 at 11:400 Comments

I got to thinking about the visor worn by the Star Trek character Geordi La Forge (actor LeVar Burton) and how relevant it is to this project. Based on the wrap-around shape of the visor and the line-scanning mode of the Photosound software that NoodleDriver told me about, it occurred to me that we could combine the two to make the BlindSight software work.

The technique will be to make each pixel or group of pixels a sound source and then locate them all in spatial arrangement around the listener's head. Then sweep the image from bottom to top (or top to bottom selectable), over and over. This would produce a real-time encoding of an image for blind people to perceive!

I'm very excited about it and plan to code up a simple example in Processing right now! Hope to have something soon.

Les out, praise the Lord!

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