I even got a written reply about the types of sounds and frequencies to use or avoid from Ivor Darreg, famous for his microtonal instuments and various early electronic instruments. I thought at the time that it might be possible to use some kind of transform to map visual input to auditory, but didn’t know how to go about it, altho I spent quite a few hours examining the mathematics that would be required.

But, I assumed that for such easy and trivial ideas that many other people who were much more knowledgeable and better financed would shortly do something way beyond my meager skills, and so, when I couldn’t find any support for “keytone,” I stopped seriously looking. Probably, if I or someone had dedicated the time and effort, this could easily have been done by the late 1980′s. There’s a broader lesson here.

Part of the problem is that there has been no money for “cures” for blindness. Look at the opposition to cures for hearing disorders, as in the Cocklear Implant. There is BIG money for dealing with blind people, money that would disappear if those people could see, even at a fraction of the quality of a typical sighted person – as was demonstrated using arrays of vibrators strapped to the back, back in the ’70′s. My understanding is that this is why there was so little progress in related fields such as wheelchairs for so many years. Applause for these people for surmounting all the barriers, technical and otherwise!!! Good show!