The poet and the "seeing machine"
Elizabeth Goldring is a poet and artist who's lost most of her sight as a result of diabetes. She's leading a group of scientists and engineers at MIT who are creating a machine that could help some people with severely impaired vision to see words and images.
She got the idea to create an affordable seeing machine about 10 years ago, after her doctor used a $100,000 piece of equipment called a scanning laser opthalmoscope to test her vision. The device projects images directly on the retina.
Goldring's new seeing machine works much the same way, but is smaller and can be built for about $4,000.