[humanser] The New Device for the Blind

[Mary Chappell]

JD,
Oh my gosh... I would love to have this device... NOT! Ignorance comes in
all shapes and sizes and every level of education. I reflect on a patient
with whom I recently worked. The patient was transgender, male to female.
She had undergone a number of procedures and was clearly pleased with the
outcome. She was hospitalized following a suicide attempt secondary to a
break up with her abusive partner. She was gragarious, and extremly
extroverted. Though her presentation, voice quality, gait, and mannerisms
were, according to her personal assessment, decidely effeminant, much of the
staff kept referring to her as him. After a couple of days in the hospital
and relatively strong rapport having been developed, she approached me with
an interesting question, "What am I emitting that is clearly male? She went
on to describe her experiences in New York when men would cat call and
express interest, noting she was the most beautiful woman they had ever
seen. This in spite of her being in sweats and a baseball cap. She aske me
what I felt in her presence and noted the value in my not seeing her and
simply experiencing her. Though she was discharged prior to our complete
exploration of this question, I was struck by her having experienced therapy
with me in such a different way, to the extent that she received our
exchange differently. I knew she had been born with male genitalia and yet,
experienced her as female. I wonder if this "new equipment" would alter that
core experience. I would not want the experience altered.
I think of another experience I recently had with an African-American,
female patient with strong Borderline Personality features. She presented
herself as European-American and, though I listened to the nurses recorded
reports outlining patient profiles and activity for days, I purposely
overlooked the racial description that was offered for that patient,
believing it was a misspoken description In the end I found that she was, in
fact, African-American. While I doubt that this is my only misperception, I
know that there are aspects of the exchange with patients, clients, family,
and friends to which I attune with clear understanding. I feel a stronger
connection to many aspects of the interpersonal interactions.

No, don't want anything to do with this new technology other than the
opportunity to test its precision and the value of the outcome.
JD, thanks for sharing.
Mary

-----Original Message-----
From: humanser-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:humanser-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of JD TOWNSEND
Sent: Sunday, May 16, 2010 8:49 PM
To: Human Services Mailing List
Subject: [humanser] The New Device for the Blind


Hi List:

I could not just read this without passing it along to our list.  This
device and the fantasy that we need such a device astounds me.

New Braille Technology Helps Visually Impaired 'See' Emotions ScienceDaily
(Apr. 28, 2010) - Without vision it's impossible to interpret facial
expressions, or so it's believed. Not any more. Shafiq ur Réhman, Umeå
University, presents a new technology in his doctoral thesis -- a Braille
code of emotions. "It gives new opportunities for social interactions for
the visually impaired," he says.
Lacking the sense of vision can be very limiting in a person's daily life.
The most obvious limitation is probably the difficulty of navigation, but
small details in everyday life, which seeing people take for granted, are
also missed. One of those things is the ability to see a person during a
conversation. Facial expressions provide emotional information and are
important in communication. A smile shows pleasure, amusement, relief, etc.
Missing information from facial expressions create barriers to social
interactions.
"Blind persons compensate for missing information with other senses such as
sound.
But it is difficult to understand complex emotions with voice alone," says
Shafiq ur Réhman.
His thesis addresses a challenging problem: how to let visually impaired
"see" others'
emotions. To make this possible the research group has developed a new
technology based on an ordinary web camera, hardware as small as a coin, and
a tactile display.
This enables the visually impaired to directly interpret human emotions.
"Visual information is transferred from the camera into advanced vibrating
patterns displayed on the skin. The vibrators are sequentially activated to
provide dynamic information about what kind of emotion a person is
expressing and the intensity of the emotion," he explains.
The first step for a user is to learn the patterns of different facial
expressions by using displaying the emotions in front of a camera that
translates the emotions into vibrational patterns. In this learning phase
the visually impaired person have a tactile display mounted on the back of a
chair. When interacting with other people a sling on the forearm can be used
instead.
The main research focus has been to characterise different emotions and to
find a way to present them by means of advanced biomedical engineering and
computer vision technologies. The project was founded by the Swedish
Research Council.
The research group's spin-off company Videoakt AB has been granted a patent
for the technology, which soon will be available as a product on the open
market. Tactile feedback is also interesting in other areas as a future
communication tool, for seeing people as well.
"We have successfully demonstrated how the technology can be implemented on
mobile phones for tactile rendering of live football games and human emotion
information through vibrations. This is an interesting way to enhance the
experience of mobile users," explains Shafiq ur Réhman.



JD Townsend, LCSW
Daytona Beach, Florida, Earth, Sol System Helping the light dependent to
see. 
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