June 27, 2008

Sight for the Blind and Speech for the Deaf

By CATHERINE RAMPELL

A professor turns cellphones into aids for the disabled

Three years ago, in the depths of a Pittsburgh winter, Priya Narasimhan saw a blind man trying to catch a bus.

Stepping in and out of pools of slush, the man called out to passing pedestrians to ask if a vehicle he heard arriving was his ride home. Buses passed by.

"We can do better than that," Ms. Narasimhan said to herself.

Ms. Narasimhan, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at