A seeing machine for the blind(ish)

Pretty cool stuff:

About 10 years ago, when she was nearly blind in both eyes, her doctor recommended a test to find out whether she had any healthy retina left at all. The test involved a large $100,000 machine called a scanning laser ophthalmoscope, which would let the doctor examine her retinas and project images directly onto them. If there were any live spots, the device might let her see.

It worked. She saw a stick-figure turtle. Ms. Goldring, a poet who has had three books published, asked to see a word. She was able to read "sun." It was the first word she had seen in many months.

...

She and a team of M.I.T. students collaborated with the machine's inventor, Robert W. Webb, a researcher at Harvard and the Massachusetts General Hospital. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration paid for part of the project.

The result is what Ms. Goldring calls a seeing machine, a smaller, simpler desktop device that cost less than $4,000 to build. It consists of a projector, computer, monitor, eyepiece and a joystick for zooming in and out. It uses light-emitting diodes instead of a laser.