Following my blog on the ‘Seeing with Sound’ technology, I received an interesting email from someone who is using the software to see.

Brian is twenty-seven years old and has been totally blind from birth. He has been using the ‘VOIC’, or ‘Seeing with Sound’ software to see using soundscapes for the past two years.

The way Brian is able to use the technology in his life shows just how valuable it is. He manages to teach horse-riding to people with disabilities. Being a horse-rider all my life, this grabbed my attention. It made me wonder if perhaps the ‘Seeing with Sound’ technology could also assist someone who is blind to ride a horse with confidence. For example, could it help the rider ’see’ an overhanging branch, a fenceline, the markers in a dressage arena? Perhaps this could open up a whole new world for riders who are blind to enter dressage events, or maybe even show-jumping.

Brian did say it takes time to get used to the sound waves, but it is worth it in the end. I have asked him to give me some more details, as I’d love to understand how it works for him in his teaching role.

I would also love to hear others’ stories of how this technology has reconnected them with the sighted world.

In my post Choosing Blindness Over Sight I raised the issue of the brain’s ability to continue “seeing” both when vision had been lost and when a person had been born blind. The inference here was that the blind person formed mental images of the environment which were as clear as vision.

But this isn’t the only way a blind person can interpret his/her world. It is also possible to see through sound.

In the Seeing With Sound website, this seemingly unbelievable fact is explained. In summary, visual images captured by a video camera are converted into sound waves which the blind person then translates back into images. When you listen to a demonstration of this phenomenon, it is very confusing. The sound waves change their pattern depending on the object in front of the video camera. To understand what that object is, the blind person also needs to use his or her sense of touch. It is then a matter of training the brain to recognise the different sound patterns and turn them into images.

Sound confusing? Well, yes it is, for the uninitiated. When I listened to the sound patterns for a bowl of popcorn, a door frame and blinds, I couldn’t “see” what the trained blind person could see. But it obviously takes much time and patience to become competent in seeing with sound.

In the broadcast I listened to on this site, the brain’s ability to interpret sound images was tested by a neuro-scientist. MRI imaging of two people listening to sound waves - one who was blind from birth, and one who had lost vision later in life - showed the visual cortex being activated in both subjects. This again proves that the visual cortex does not stop functioning once sight has been lost. In fact, the scientist in this experiment believes that we use all our senses to “see”, and that much more of the brain is used to bring us visual images.

As fascinated as I am in this new way of seeing, I think I’ll stick with my mental images for now. I find the repetitiveness of the sound waves distracting and annoying. But for others, it works, bringing them vision that they otherwise would not have. And that’s a great thing.

I’ve heard of and experienced writers’ block, but I’ve never really been through writers’ burn-out.

That’s what I’m calling my slump in the novel writing this week. For the past six or seven weeks, I’ve been solidly writing scenes and chapters for my young adult novel, never missing a day and loving every minute. But this week, it all came to a grinding halt. I had no ideas at all for the next scene, and no enthusiasm to find them. It felt so awful, but I couldn’t do anything about it in terms of making it happen.

So I did the next best thing. I wrote a whacky little short story to lighten me up a bit. I didn’t consciously think that this might shift things for me, help me get back into the novel, but it has.

And it makes sense now that I look back on it. When you are bogged down in something and can’t move, doing something completely different is often the best way of becoming unstuck. I didn’t want to stop writing - especially as this is my career - but I had to get away from my novel. The light-hearted, quick paced story I wrote has done the trick.

In this story, I wrote about a totally unbelievable situation with a gullible character. It was meant to be whacky and way-out. I sent it off to my tutor for feedback, which in a way, I knew was dumb. My tutor has taught me to write realistic scenes with believable characters. Needless to say, she was very sceptical about my whacky story. But I’m not worried because it has worked its magic. Maybe I needed to go a bit wild for a while.

I’m still going to enter my short story in a competition and see how it is received. There’s no harm trying. But now, it’s back to the novel.

If you feel stuck with something you’ve been doing for a while, try doing something completely different. Dont’ worry about time loss through doing another activity; you will feel refreshed and attack your old task with renewed energy, and therefore be more productive.

When I was growing up, I wanted to be a journalist. I spoke to one of my uncles, who was teaching journalism at the time, about whether someone like me, with a vision impairment, could do the job. He thought it would be difficult, as I would struggle with describing things around me, so I gave up the idea.

But now the dream is coming true, but in a slightly different, and probably better, format. For the past four weeks, I’ve been working as a ghost blogger for Paul and Jenny Geelen who are Occularists in Australia. I love the work. It involves brainstorming ideas for blogs and being creative with the content. The best thing is that by writing the blogs, really good information is getting out to people all over the world about eye loss and artificial eyes. I say good information, because there is a lot of badly thought-out and poorly written blogs out there. But Jenny and Paul run a professional service, and so their blog reflects this.

To help me do my work, I have a fantastic little audio digital voice recorder. It wasn’t designed for the blind, but the blind have snapped it up. Why? Because it has voice menus. Yes, it talks. I don’t know why the company made it that way, but thank goodness they did. I find it a far more efficient way of recording interviews and notes than by typing things up on my portable computer. It’s amazing how much you miss when you’re typing while you’re listening.

So inbetween the novel writing (which is coming along really well), entering short story competitions, doing talks and generally running my business, I am happily engrossed in my new freelance writing work.

IN fact, this work will overlap with some of the content for my own blog. Since I listened to ‘The Blind Brain’ and posted about it last time, I’m keen to do more research on blindness and other senses. So stay tuned for more blogs on this topic, and maybe some in-depth articles.

If you lost your eye sight through an accident or disease and you were offered the chance to get it back, would you take it?

And if you were born totally blind and had the chance to experience sight, would you take it?

The answer to both these questions might seem obvious, but they’re not.

In a two part series called ‘The Blind Brain’ on ABC Radio National’s ‘All in the Mind’ program, these questions are explored. A man who lost his sight many years ago as a young person through an accident said emphatically that he would not want his sight restored through the use of computer technology, such as chips and bionic eyes. On the other side of the coin, a man born without sight said he would jump at the chance.

What is the difference?

Having lost my sight later in life, I can see the issue very clearly. The first gentleman interviewed spoke about how his brain or mind’s eye has taken over the function of his sight. He ’sees’ everything around him three-dimensionally and in colour. If he is pouring a cup of coffee, he has to look at it, or he will spill it. To ’see’ what is behind him, he has to turn around. He spoke of his world as once being rich with true vision, but now being even richer and sharper with the images he sees around him constantly. And, of course like me, he dreams in full vision.

Before I go into the second man’s case, let me explain this further. Scientists have discovered something critical about our brains. We have an area called the visual cortex which takes up thirty percent of the brain. This area, as it sounds, is responsible for vision. The recent findings by scientists is that when someone loses their sight, the visual cortex does not stop working, but becomes involved in creating images through the use of the other senses. It has shown that the brain is adaptable to changed circumstances, and this is very exciting.

All this makes perfect sense to me, because I still feel that I can see. In fact, I feel my sight has improved and become sharper. For example, I have vivid images of photographs that I know were taken after I’d lost my sight, but I feel that I’ve seen them. My brain has taken over, recreating those photos for me.

Now for the second case - the man born totally blind. It makes sense that he would want to experience vision of any kind, as he has never had the chance. The type of artificial vision the scientists say they will be able to produce will be patchy and distorted. The reason for this is that the eye is an incredible structure that has so many functioning parts, it is impossible to reproduce it. They say that someone with this kind of artificial vision may not be able to distinguish between a cup and an orange.

When I was losing my sight, it was patchy and very limited. But I still tried to use it. Because I was struggling to see, my other senses couldn’t kick in, as they have now, because I see nothing at all. Now I can sense things around me such as trees, walls and people, and my hearing has become acuter. If I was given this distorted artificial vision, I would lose the clarity of vision that I have now.

If you would like to hear these fascinating podcasts, click here

On Friday night, I attended the Fellowship of Australian Writers Awards Ceremony at Deakin University in Melbourne. As we entered the university grounds, signs everywhere announced the event with “Australian Literary Awards”. It was quite an honour to be attending such an event.

My main reason for going was not only to wave the West Australian flag, but to allow myself the pleasure of being presented with my award for my short story, ‘Sophie’s Rose’ taking out first prize in one of the categories. And I’m very glad I made the trip, despite the expense. What came across strongly to me throughout the evening was the emphasis the Fellowship of Australian Writers (Vic) places on promoting and encouraging new writers. Not only were the first prize winners presented and acknowledged, but also the people whose work was ‘commended’ and ‘highly commended’. All up, there were 104 writers presented with certificates out of a total of 1,000 entries.

The judge who scrutinised my category commented that my story stood out in both the first and second readings, which was a huge compliment for me. She even came up to me during the ceremony and gave me a copy of a book she’d written about her daughter who was born with severe disabilities and for whom the category was established, the theme of the short story having to be about disability. I was very touched by her generosity.

This national competition is one of the very few places where writers can enter their unpublished novels, with the hope of being picked up by a publisher.

The other great thing that came out of the evening was that the President of the FAW made a comment about all the FAW groups becoming one body, a move that I think would be very beneficial. In the West, there aren’t many opportunities for writers. In other states, there is a wider range of workshops and online classes to choose from for those of us who want to expand our writing careers. I look forward to this happening in the future.

Lucy, my guide dog, travelled well and had a great time in Melbourne. She met up with her puppy walkers (the people who raised her for the first year of her life) and her reaction was tear-jerking. She has never forgotten them and was so excited to see them again. The comment they made was although they’d found it so hard to give her up, seeing her helping me and knowing that she has changed my life is reward enough. What a great way to end a perfect trip to the East.

I’m trying to forget that I got sick on the way home. I ate something at Melbourne airport that was obviously dodgey. I spent almost all of the four hour flight home telling myself that I’d be fine, that I wasn’t going to be sick on the plane. The guy next to me must have been praying hard when he saw me reach for the air sick bag. I decided to warn the airline staff before we landed how unwell I was feeling because I knew that I’d need maximum assistance to get off the plane. When we got there, all I could do was get myself out of my seat while the airline staff grabbed my hand luggage and put Lucy’s harness on. I was so out of it that I had no idea they’d put it on back to front and inside out! Somehow, Lucy and I made it down the steps to the tarmac without breaking our necks. Luckily, my Mum was meeting us, so I didn’t have to frighten any taxi driver with my green face. But when she saw us coming, she thought something was wrong. Lucy was walking in a very weird fashion, almost crossing her legs because the harness was on incorrectly. We must have made a peculiar sight, what with Lucy’s gait and me hanging onto a security guy’s arm! But Lucy fared well, and we got home before the dreaded bug really took hold. That’s mind over matter for you.