We’ve seen many devices to help the blind, but this is one of the coolest. BrainPort was first introduced in 2006. The idea was that it would allow users to regain some vision via a camera and electrical impulses sent to the tongue. Now we learn that the device may actually be available commercially very soon.

The BrainPort decodes signals from a camera on your head and transforms them into electrical impulses that hit your tongue, but gently, not joltingly. The impulses are then experienced as spatial awareness and even give one the ability to read text. Pretty amazing stuff.

Filling a mug is something that people with sight take for granted. For the blind it presents a challenge. Spills can happen when you can’t actually see the level of liquid. Of course clean up is challenging for us all and something that we would rather avoid if possible.

Well, this Braun Bell concept mug solves the problem in a unique common sense way. It chimes when the liquid hits one of three levels within the mug, allowing a blind person to know when their cup is filled to the level that they want.

Here’s a concept that would really help the visually impaired and blind. The Touch & Go navigation system is a combination of a hand gadget and an earpiece that will give you directions as a relief map on its wearable navigator with tactile display.

The scale is 1:1,000 and the center of the display is where the user is currently. An arrow points toward where you should go, while audio through the earphones will speak any other details needed. Pretty interesting take on navigation for the blind.

This isn’t the first phone concept for the blind that we’ve seen, but it’s an interesting one. It’s from designer Zhenwei and it’s called the B-Touch. The idea is to help the blind communicate more effectively in a mobile friendly way with family and friends.

It features a touchscreen display for Braille, thanks to blind touchscreen technology and uses a combination of voice systems and programs to make it fully functional. It even sports other features, like a navigational system, an e-book reader and an object recognizer.

iVisit is working on an application called SeeScan that can help blind people identify everyday objects around them, which we take for granted. The program uses your cameraphone to detect objects using image recognition software, while reading aloud what the phone identifies it as.

There are many practical applications, like telling the difference between denominations of paper money for example. It could certainly make life easier for the blind and may help them speed up some of their activities during their typical day.

We all take our sight for granted and tend to forget how fortunate we are that we can experience an entire visual existence that those with no sight will never know. For the blind, content on the web is like a giant gaping void that they have no way of navigating. Monitors are useless for conveying info to the blind. They basically live in a different world just parallel to our own. One that we will never know.

Thanks to this Electronic Braille Reader that converts web content to Braille, the blind can finally get a taste of what we have been experiencing on the web. Check out a video below.

Typically, translating any book into braille more than doubles its thickness. But with e-books that doesn’t have to happen. Designer Seon-Keun Park, Byung-Min Woo, Sun-Hye Woo and Jin-Sun Park want more blind people to be able to enjoy books, so they created this Braille e-book concept.

The idea is that this is a braille Kindle. Using EAP technology, it can change the surface pattern via an electromagnetic signal that will simulate braille text. It’s an elegant and simple solution that would enrich the lives of blind readers quite a bit.

The iPhone has never really been a friendly device for the blind, so this case designed by Bruno Fosi is fairly impressive. The Silicone Touch covers the iPhone’s screen and features a selection of bas-relief buttons that correspond to menu items in a custom app.

This lets the visually impaired access all of the phone’s functions, even multi-touch and finger flick scrolling. None of the phone’s functions are compromised. It’s just a concept at the moment, but this is one that we hope will see the light of day very soon.

Auguste Reymond has a brand new Classic quartz watch in the Braille Hi-Touch. You wouldn’t know it at first glance, but it’s designed especially for the blind, allowing the visually impaired to read the time with their fingertips via raised hour-markers and special hands. A hinge at 10 o’clock gives easy access to the dial. And it also happens to look good for those who are seeing it from afar. No word yet on pricing and availability.

Apple has reached an agreement with the Massachusetts attorney general’s office and the National Federation of the Blind and they will make the iTunes service more accessible to the blind. It will be called iTunes U and that area of the iTunes Store will feature educational content from colleges and universities for the blind from December 31st onward. That’s just the beginning.

Apple will also continue toward providing full accessibility of iTunes before the June 30, 2009 deadline. To top it all off Apple will be donating $250,000 to the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind. Nice move by Apple, because like the new windows campaign suggests, not all users come from the same mold.

The Touch Sight concept is a camera for the visually impaired. It records sounds by transferring images with 3D embossing technology so that people who can’t see can have a recording of the sounds of the event. Those who can see use their eyes to view a photo, the blind will use their sense of touch to actually “see” the image.

It’s an innovative idea and so naturally it was one of the winning designs for the 2008 International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA), which honors stand-out designs in products, ecodesign, packaging, research and concepts like this one. It’s absolutely brilliant.

This concept phone by Takumi Yoshida, looks wavier than a water bed bearing a Sumo wrestler. That’s because it’s made for the blind and the nearly blind, with lighted sides that help convey different alert messages and curvy tactile keys that make it distinguishable for the visually impaired.

It would also be good for those users who want to feel as if they have squeezed their phone into a different shape, causing it to bulge. Great idea for the sight-impaired as there aren’t many phones they can use easily.

If you’re blind, you don’t have a ton of options…for anything really. Not many companies are making special gear for you. The gear you do have doesn’t get upgraded as much as regular people’s. For instance, how many watches do you see that cater to the blind? I’m sure they are out there, but there can’t be many.

Check out this braille watch conceived by David Chavez. The Haptica Braille watch will give the blind the time, so they don’t have to have someone else tell them what time it is. For the moment, it’s just a concept and the Braille dots are on tiny disks that rotate. Only half of the disk is showing. As the time goes by and the disks rotate, the dot pattern changes. Pretty simple way to design a braille watch.

You might think this is the next step in the evolution of the Nintendo Wiimote, but it’s really a “smart” wand designed to replace that long stick that the visually impaired have been stuck with for decades. It was created by Jin Woo Han and uses a sensor on the front to detect nearby objects by providing feedback about how far away those objects are, through varying levels of vibration.

The wand even includes a tactile strip in the area where you place your thumb that will go so far as to indicate the position of objects around you. Both feedback methods beat the hell out of using audio cues, which can be unreliable if there is too much background noise. The Tactile Wand is just a concept at the moment, and we probably will not see it for a long time, but when we do see it, it will be a powerful tool for the sight impaired. I just hope it can also detect the lack of objects, like open man-holes and the like.

Zen is all about being calm with your surroundings, grasshopper. When you look at your PC, do you feel stressed? Of course you do, work, work, work. They call this the sandbox PC, and it should help to alleviate such things and put you in a calm state of mind. Users can use it without even looking at it, because it operates using an active surface which changes texture depending on the area or function you choose.

This would be particularly good for the blind or visually impaired. We are used to visual inputs, they are not. It’s quite a learning curve for those of us with sight, but I don’t think we will be seeing it anytime soon anyway. I hope I’m wrong however, because this would be great for a great tool for those who can not see.