Technology That Helps the Blind See

 
For as long as there have been blind people, there has been technology invented for the sole purpose of helping them live easier lives. The types of technology range from collapsible canes, to voice recognition features on smartphones. I have a blind grandmother and I can still remember the day she showed me her "talking watch" for the very first time. She simply pressed a button and the watch vocalized what time it was. As a young child in the 1990s, my mind was blown.

I was recently doing research on blindness and discovered Tommy Edison, a blind film critic on YouTube. There is a lot of things this charming man can do without the aid of technology, but I was really amazed by a particular iPhone app he demonstrated that allows blind people to identify objects as easily as sighted people do. "Tap Tap See" works by identifying specific items that the user has taken a photo of, all the way down to the brand name and color. Tommy demonstrates by first taking a picture of a twenty dollar bill, and the phone correctly tells him what denomination the bill is. Being taken advantage of while purchasing things is pretty common to blind people, unfortunately. Since there is no way to identify a one dollar bill from a fifty dollar bill based on touch or smell alone, they must rely on the honesty of strangers, which isn't always very reliable.

The app correctly identifies a white Adidas sock and a can of Healthy Choice chicken noodle soup. This app is one example of technology that can help blind people live alone and not have to question what type of food they're eating, what they're wearing, which CD or DVD they've picked up, and many other things that sighted people don't even think about when they're going about daily life. This is yet another example of technology at its finest: helping people's lives be easier.