Vincent Martin: Health Research Scientist Helps Create Technology for Blind People
By Thomas, Empish J.; Dialogue: A World of Ideas for Visually Impaired People of All Ages, Vol. 46, No. 5, pp. 33-37Publication Date: September-October 2007
Profile of Vincent Martin, a health-research scientist at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Atlanta, Georgia. Martin, who is blind, is at work on two way-finding devices, the SeeStar and the SeeScan, which help blind people navigate. Both devices can be installed on, and interface with, cell phones. The SeeStar, which features a camera, can take pictures of an area where the user is lost, transmit the picture via the phone line to a computer and enable a sighted person to communicate the location to the user. The SeeScan can scan a photo and store it as an image to which a name can be verbally recorded. Martin hopes to combine the two devices into one. His work as an adaptive technology instructor at a rehabilitation facility, his career mentoring at the American Foundation for the Blind, and his own disability provided the ideal background for his current position, where his focus is on how a person really does things, and how man and machinery interact.
Published by: Blindskills, Inc. (Website:http://www.blindskills.com)
