Professor Winick talks about Overcoming Barriers
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Overcoming barriers
Posted By rcjones On June 5, 2009 @ 5:43 pm In Features, Priority: Slider Feature Item | Comments Disabled
During the No Barriers’ Science and Technology Symposium, Ninel Gregori (second from right), an assistant professor of clinical ophthalmology at Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, talks about a device called BrainPort that allows people with visual impairments to see. Participating on the panel with her are, from left, Stephen McCormack, CEO of Intelligent Medical Implants; Bruce J. Winick, UM professor of law and professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences; and Anil Raj, a research scientist at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition.
No Barriers Festival shows off technology, highlights research that is helping the physically challenged
With his guide dog Bruno lying at his feet, University of Miami law professor Bruce Winick sat in the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton Coconut Grove hotel last Friday and removed his cell phone from his coat pocket. After placing the June 4 edition of The New York Times in his lap, Winick aimed the screen of his phone at the front page, took a photograph, then pressed a button and listened as a computerized voice read aloud an article on President Obama’s visit to Cairo.
“Rival messages as Obama lands in the Mideast,” the voice said in a clear tone, reading the headline of the paper’s lead story.
Over the past few years, such technology has helped the visually impaired Winick, diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa when he was 32 years old, read and respond to his daily e-mails, prepare lectures for throngs of law school students, and write more than ten books and over 100 journal articles.
Innovation Village at Shake-A-Leg Miami featured demonstrations and products designed for the physically challenged.
Hundreds of people got a firsthand look at such high-tech innovations this past weekend at Miami’s first-ever No Barriers Festival, a four-day international gathering of physically challenged and visually impaired people, some of them soldiers who lost limbs in battle, and the researchers who are developing cutting-edge devices that could one day help them walk and see again.
Co-sponsored by the University of Miami, the festival included symposiums, clinics, and a regatta at various locations in Miami-Dade County. At Shake-A-Leg Miami, an aquatic center offering programs for children with disabilities, an Innovation Village featured demonstrations and the supervised use of the newest adaptive products.
UM’s participation in the festival is a result of the school’s involvement with the Clinton Global Initiative. As part of that association, UM took on a Commitment to Action, part of which was to work with Shake-A-Leg to help host and plan the No Barriers Festival, at which several UM students volunteered.
UM also had a strong presence at the festival’s Science and Technology Symposium, with several of the institution’s Miller School of Medicine researchers speaking at sessions on Friday and Saturday.
SEEING THROUGH THE TONGUE
Among the high-tech innovations showcased: BrainPort, which enables people with visual impairments to see. Developed by a University of Wisconsin-Madison scientist, the device works by converting images from a video camera to electrical impulses that are transmitted via the tongue to the brain of a blind person and turned into black-and-white images that the user can see.
Wounded warriors learned how to scuba dive at Innovation Village on the campus of Shake-A-Leg Miami, the primary location of the No Barriers Festival.
With more than three million visually impaired or blind people in the United States, “any device that can help [restore even limited vision] is essential,” said Ninel Gregori, an assistant professor of clinical ophthalmology at UM’s Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, who spoke at a No Barriers symposium session on technologies for the visually impaired.
Bascom Palmer, she said, will soon submit grants to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of BrainPort, testing the instrument in the lab and eventually allowing patients to take the device home.
But Star Wars-like technology such as BrainPort won’t be enough to help the blind and other physically limited people overcome all obstacles. Psychological and social barriers must also be conquered, said Winick, who is also a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and was one of the presenters at the session.
Those obstacles, he said, some of which are imposed by people who unfairly label those who are physically challenged, can impede the social, educational, and occupational opportunities of people with disabilities.
“We need to break down those barriers and stigmas and show role models of physically challenged people with highly successful abilities,” Winick said.
Now in his 35th year at UM, Winick is an example of such a role model. At 64 years old he still travels the world, taking his guide dog to conferences in France, Germany, and Switzerland, and using a pedestrian GPS system that maps out routes and allows him walk city streets.
Winick’s acceptance of his condition was not always the case. For a long time he told no one about his degenerative eye disease, afraid that it would discredit him among his peers.
“I faked it for many years,” he said, “and a lot of people just didn’t know.” But he “came out of the closet and felt much more comfortable,” he said. “We need to be who we are. It’s lonely in the closet.”
OTHER SESSIONS
A Friday session on spinal cord injury included Damien Pearse, a researcher at The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis; Edelle Field-Fote, a professor of neurological surgery and director of the Neuromotor Rehabilitation Research Laboratory at The Miami Project; and Mark Nash, a professor of rehabilitation medicine and physical therapy. Barth Green, cofounder of The Miami Project and Shake-A-Leg, moderated the session.
Thomas J. Balkany, Hotchkiss Professor and chair of the Department of Otolaryngology, participated in a Saturday session on neural prostheses that was moderated by Bart Chernow, vice provost of technology advancement and a professor of medicine and anesthesiology.
“What we’re trying to do is advance technology to a stage that it can actually help human beings,” said Chernow, who co-chaired the festival’s Science and Technology Symposium. “It’s nice to do things in a concept phase, but unless you really realize the full potential of the technology, you never quite get to cross the goal line.”
Miller School of Medicine Dean Pascal Goldschmidt also addressed attendees during opening remarks on Friday, telling an audience that the United States is “extraordinary” because it supports individuals who are physically limited. “You can’t go to another place in the world where support for such individuals is greater,” he said.
Goldschmidt also outlined several Miller School initiatives that are assisting such individuals, noting its work in stem cell research, spinal cord injury repair, and its trauma center that helps train Army medics who treat wounded warriors from the battlefield.
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