Analog Science
Fiction and Fact Magazine in an article by Joe Lazzaro titled "Artificial vision and
the kite and key experiment: visual prosthetics for the blind".
July 14, 2004, findings obtained with The vOICe were presented at the 4th Forum of European
Neuroscience (FENS Forum 2004) in Lisbon, Portugal, July 10-14, 2004, in a poster presentation
by Petra Stoerig, Eva Ludowig, Peter Meijer and Alvaro Pascual-Leone titled
"Seeing through the ears?".
June 8, 2004, The vOICe was featured on the "Interesting Thing of the Day" (ITotD) website
in an article by Joe Kissell titled
"Bionic Eyes - Seeing is believing".
May 10 - 15, 2004, The vOICe technology was demonstrated by the
CSIR (South African Council for Scientific
and Industrial Research) at the National Science Week 2004 in South Africa. The photograph below shows the
South African minister of Science and Technology, Mr Mosibudi Mangena, visiting the booth where The vOICe
is being demonstrated by Andrew Smith of the Information Society Technologies Centre (ISTC), part of CSIR.

April 26, 2004, The vOICe was featured in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in an article
by Brian Feldman about Adam Shaible titled
"Device lets man, blind since birth, hear the sights of sunset".
April 13, 2004, The vOICe was featured on BBC Ouch Close Up in an article by Liz Ball titled
"Down with dogs and canes?".
March 12, 2004, The vOICe was featured in the Dutch technical news magazine
"Technisch Weekblad"
(VNU Business Publications), in an article by Teake Zuidema titled "Blinden kunnen 'zien' met een Nokia" (Vol. 35, Issue 10, p. 3).
March 2004, The vOICe was featured in "Ud & Se", the monthly passenger magazine of the Danish State Railways (DSB),
with an article titled "Se med Ørerne", p. 50.
February 21, 2004, The vOICe was featured on the homepage of
Slashdot Japan
("で携帯電話が盲導犬代わりに!?").
February 2004, The vOICe was featured in IEEE Spectrum with a News Analysis article by Willie D. Jones
titled
"Sight for Sore Ears - Dutchman develops auditory imager for the blind",
pp. 13-14.

January 21, 2004, the outcomes of the neuroscience project of Petra Stoerig at the
University of Düsseldorf, based on using The vOICe with blindfolded sighted subjects,
were featured on German national radio on channel WDR 5, in the Science program "Leonardo",
in a broadcast titled
"Mit den Ohren sehen"
(see also the German transcript of the WDR-5
broadcast). The broadcast had originally been planned for January 16, 2004.
One can listen to an online MP3 streaming audio version of this
WDR-5 Leonardo radio interview with Petra Stoerig
(about six and a half minutes, in German).

January 19, 2004, Petra Stoerig of the University of Düsseldorf gave a presentation
titled "Seeing with the ears: A pilot study" at the
Laboratory for Experimental Psychology in Paris, France.
January 1, 2004, The vOICe was featured in The Washington Times with an article by Fred Reed titled
"Sound gives 'sight' to blind".
December 3, 2003, The vOICe was featured in the South-African national
newspaper "Die Burger" with an article in Afrikaans by Carel van Dyk titled
"Sien met jou ore" (p. 15).
November 28, 2003, The vOICe was featured in the High-Tech section of
the French science website futura-sciences.com with a news article titled
"Voir avec
ses oreilles: une nouvelle méthode pour les aveugles".
November 10, 2003, The vOICe was featured on Channel 4 UK in the
Richard and Judy show (starting at 5:00 p.m.),
by Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan. One of the participants was Kevin O'Regan, director
of the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology at the French National Centre for Scientific
Research (CNRS) in Paris, France. Another participant was John Cronly-Dillon of the Department
of Optometry and Vision Sciences at the University of Manchester, UK.
November 2003, The vOICe was featured in Gale's Science & Health Community News
of the Gale Group, Inc., in an article by Agnieszka M. Lichanska titled
"Seeing with Sound".
October 17, 2003, The vOICe was featured in the business news section of the
Japanese Internet Industry portal japan.internet.com, in an article titled
"五感をスイッチ"
(Senses switch). The news feature also appeared on Yahoo News Japan.
October 17, 2003, The vOICe was featured in the Czech magazine iDNES Technet,
in an article by Petr Nachtmann titled "Slepí vidí sluchem díky zařízení od Philipse".
October 16, 2003, The vOICe was featured on the Dutch Internet portal Planet Internet,
in an article titled
"The vOICe laat blinden zien" (The vOICe lets blind see).
October 16, 2003, The vOICe website was featured as the "Dot com of the Day" on the homepage
of the Japanese site
"www.100shiki.com".
October 14, 2003, the Korean Internet Journal donga.com featured The vOICe
in an article titled
"시각장애인用
신호전달장치
실용단계".
October 14, 2003, the Dutch commercial radio station Yorin FM featured The vOICe
with a ten minute telephone interview in the morning radio program
"Eddo in de Ochtend!",
presented by Edwin Ouwehand and Joost Buitenweg.
October 13, 2003, the South African radio station 702 Talk Radio featured The vOICe
with a five minute telephone interview in the radio program
Technobyte, presented by Aki Anastasiou.
October 8, 2003, dinner in Amsterdam with blind author
Joe Lazzaro,
discussing various vision (substitution) technologies.
October 8, 2003, The vOICe was featured by Martin Sivertsen in the Norwegian magazine IT Avisen, in an article titled
"Blinde kan «se» med mobilen - Kamerabilder blir til lyd".
October 8, 2003, The vOICe was featured by Susanne Nylén in the Swedish magazine
Aftonbladet, in an article titled
"Blinda ser med kamera - Ny teknik
hjälper blinda se med ljud".
October 7, 2003, BBC News Online featured The vOICe and its first implementation
for mobile phones by Blue Edge Bulgaria in an article by Lakshmi Sandhana titled
"Blind 'see with sound'".
Translations of this article are also available in
Russian,
Arabic and
Portuguese.

September 20, 2003, findings obtained with The vOICe were presented at the
13th conference of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology (ESCoP 2003), Granada, Spain,
in an oral presentation by Malika Auvray, Kevin O'Regan and Sylvain Hanneton titled
"Localisation, form recognition and emergence of sensation in sensory substitution".
September 2, 2003, findings obtained with The vOICe were presented at the
26th European Conference on Visual Perception (ECVP 2003), Paris, France, in
a poster by Malika Auvray, Sylvain Hanneton and Kevin O'Regan titled
"Localisation and form recognition in sensory substitution" (182 K PDF file).
See also the
poster abstract.
September 11, 2003, the neuroscience project of Petra Stoerig at the University of Düsseldorf,
based on The vOICe, was featured in the German newspaper NRZ (Neuen Ruhr/Rhein Zeitung) in an article
by Arndt Stermann titled "Mit den Ohren sehen lernen".
September 2003, the neuroscience project of Petra Stoerig at the University of Düsseldorf,
based on The vOICe, was featured in the "MAGAZIN der Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf",
2003, issue 3, in an article by Victoria Meinschäfer titled
"Mit den Ohren sehen lernen?" (160 K PDF file).
July 10, 2003, The Christian Science Monitor featured The vOICe and GPS in an article by Lakshmi Sandhana titled
"Seeing-eye and navigation technologies mean more freedom for the blind".
July 2, 2003, the Dutch national newspaper "NRC Handelsblad" featured The vOICe software on their
website in an article titled
"Zien met geluid"
(seeing with sound), by science writer Herbert Blankesteijn.
June 28, 2003, The vOICe for Windows software was demonstrated by Herbert Blankesteijn on Dutch
Teleac/NOT Radio in the program TeleScoop Magazine, together with Ingrid Drissen en Willem Jan Hagens.
The radio broadcast is available online as MP3 streaming audio via the link
Circus Blankesteijn: Hoeveel vingers steek ik op?
(about 11 minutes, in Dutch).
June 24, 2003, invited presentation on
The vOICe in the Neuroinformatics Seminar at the Institute for
Neuro- and Bioinformatics at University Luebeck, Germany
(
Institut für Neuro- und Bioinformatik, Universität zu Lübeck).
This presentation was preceeded by an introductory seminar titled "Sehen mit dem Ohr?" on June 10, 2003,
by Simon Vogt, Christopher Krause and Erhardt Barth at the same institute.
June 20, 2003, The vOICe for Windows software was reviewed in the two Australian newspapers
"The Sydney Morning Herald"
and
"The Age", in an
article by Rose Vines titled "Listen up".
June 11, 2003, The vOICe for Windows software was presented by blind comedian Vincent Bijlo on
Dutch Teleac/NOT Radio in the program TeleScoop Actueel. The radio broadcast is available online as
MP3 streaming audio via the link
Vincent Bijlo's column in TeleScoop Actueel
(about 5 minutes, in Dutch).
May 28, 2003, invited presentation on The vOICe for USCKI Incognito at the USCKI symposium
"Perceiving is Believing", Utrecht, The Netherlands. The other invited speakers were
Crétien van Campen,
Pieter P. Jonker and
Erik Myin. Chairman was Vincent Bijlo.
May 27, 2003, the German newspaper "Süddeutsche Zeitung" featured The vOICe and the associated
neuroscience project at the University of Düsseldorf in an article by Dorothee Lehmann titled
"Weg macht Musik - Eine Brille
für Blinde verwandelt Bilder in Töne".
May 7, 2003, invited presentation on The vOICe at the Institute of Medicine (IME), Research Center Juelich,
Germany (
Institut für Medizin, Forschungszentrum Jülich).
April 28, 2003, the German radio station DeutschlandRadio Berlin featured
the neuroscience project at the University of Düsseldorf, based on The vOICe, in the program
"Die Hörbrille"
("hearing glasses") by Stephanie Kowalewski.
April 25, 2003, the German newspaper "Frankfurter Rundschau" featured The vOICe
in relation to the Hollywood movie "Daredevil" in an article by Janko Röttgers titled
"Sehen mit dem Ohr"
(Seeing with your ears).
April 20, 2003, the German newspaper "Welt am Sonntag" featured The vOICe and the associated
neuroscience project at the University of Düsseldorf in an article by Dorothee Lehmann and
Bernd Kopp titled
"Spezialbrille für Blinde macht Bilder hörbar" (Special glasses for the blind make images audible).
April 2003, The vOICe was featured in a thematic issue of the French edition of Scientific
American, "Dossier Pour La Science", pp. 30-35, in an article titled
"Voir avec les oreilles"
(seeing with the ears, 175 K PDF file),
by Kevin O'Regan and Malika Auvray of the Laboratory
for Experimental Psychology of the University of Paris 5.
March 23, 2003, The vOICe was mentioned on Slashdot in a feature on
"The
Status Quo Of Computer Vision".
March 4, 2003, the neuroscience project of Petra Stoerig at the University of Düsseldorf,
based on The vOICe, was featured in the German newspaper "Neuss-Grevenbroicher Zeitung" in an article
by Christoph Kleinau about test subject Jan-Carlo Portillo titled
"Für die Wissenschaft dem Licht entsagt" (125 K PDF file).

March 2003, The vOICe was featured in Laptop Magazine, in an article on artificial
vision written by Diane Stresing. The title of the article in the Science & Technology section was
"Seeing Is Believing".
February 27 and 28, 2003, The vOICe and the associated neuroscience project at the
University of Düsseldorf (Petra Stoerig)
were featured by Michael Ringelsiep on German television
(3Sat, WDR, SWR, MDR, SFB B1 and BRalpha), in the science news program
"Nano - Die Welt von Morgen"
(nano - the world of tomorrow), under the subject line "Eine Hörbrille lässt sehen"
(hearing glasses provide sight). Available as
MP4 streaming video file.

MP4 streaming video of The vOICe featured on 3Sat/WDR
A related article "Hörbrille für Blinde - Mit den Ohren sehen",
by Frank Staudenmayer, appeared on February 28 on the Bayerischer Rundfunk website.
February 24, 2003, invited presentation on The vOICe at the Department
of Functional Neurobiology, Helmholtz Research School, Utrecht University,
The Netherlands.
January 2003, The vOICe was featured in the quarterly special issue of the
French popular science magazine "Science & Vie Junior" (Science and Life Junior) - Hors
Série No. 51, in the article "Et les Aveugles Verront" (and the blind will see),
by Muriel Valin, pp. 74-80. The special issue was dedicated to "L'oeil et le cerveau"
(the eye and the brain).
December 15, 2002, the Times of India featured The vOICe and one of its users in India,
Pranav Lal, in an article by Sanghamitra Chakraborty titled
The vOICe that helps the visually-handicapped 'see'.
Friday August 2, 2002, The vOICe technology was referred to in
"Advances in Computer Vision",
the plenary keynote by Massimo Piccardi of Sydney University of
Technology, Australia, at the SSGRR 2002s (International Conference
on Advances in Infrastructure for e-Business, e-Education, e-Science,
and e-Medicine on the Internet), L'Aquila, Italy.
April 15 and 16, 2002, invited presentation on seeing with sound at the workshop
on Multimodal Interactions in Perception, Paris, France, at the Institut Henri Poincaré,
Amphi Darboux. Organized by J. Kevin O'Regan and James J. Clark.
April 12, 2002, Wired News covered The vOICe in the Business News article
Red, Blue, Green and Other Sounds,
by Mark K. Anderson.

April 8, 2002, two invited presentations on seeing with sound at the Tucson 2002
conference, Toward a Science of Consciousness, Tucson,
Arizona, USA. The presentations by Peter Meijer and Pat Fletcher (a blind user of
The vOICe), are available online as 32 Kbps MP3 streaming audio via the links
Seeing with sound: Is it vision?
(about 26 minutes) and
Seeing with sound: A journey into sight
(about 24 minutes).
April 1 and 2, 2002, The vOICe was featured by Rick Lockridge on the U.S. television
channel G4 TV (formerly TechTV), in their prime-time newscast program "Tech Live" (broadcast Monday
April 1, 2002, 8:30 p.m. EST and also April 2, 2002, 9:00 a.m. and 4 p.m. EST). The formerly online
G4 TechTV story
includes a link to two minutes of streaming video of the G4 TechTV
television broadcast. Available as
Pat Fletcher on TechTV.

MP4 streaming video with Pat Fletcher on TechTV
The G4 TechTV story also appeared in the Sci/Tech section of
ABC News
of April 2, 2002.

February 8, 2002, invited presentation titled "Seeing with Sound: Development of a
Camera-Based Sensory Bypass for the Blind" in the
"Oberseminar: Grundlagen der Physiologischen Psychologie" at the Institute of Experimental Psychology, section
Experimental Biological Psychology
(Prof. Petra Stoerig), University of Düsseldorf (Heinrich-Heine University), Germany.
December 9 - 12, 2001, The vOICe was featured by Mike Lippert in an interview on Danish Radio 1 in
the technology program "Harddisken" (Ugens Harddisk on DR P1),
now available as MP3 streaming audio
Seeing with Sound
(about twelve and a half minutes, mostly Danish, partly English).
November 4, 2001, The vOICe was featured by Anna Bäsén in the Swedish magazine
EXPRESSEN.SE, in an article titled
"Titta - nu kan blinda se med öronen!"
("Look - now the blind can see with their ears!").
November 3, 2001, The vOICe was featured on Sweden's Radio 1 by Per Gustavsson in the
science program "Vetandets värld lördag", now available as MP3 streaming
audio
Nu försöker forskarna lära oss att se med öronen
(almost six minutes, mostly Swedish, some English).
November 1, 2001, invited presentation at the NIC2001 (Nordic Interactive Conference)
in Copenhagen, Denmark.
July 2001, The vOICe for Windows was used by the CNIB (Canadian National Institute for the Blind) at the
SCORE 2001 summer camp.
June 2001, The vOICe for Windows was featured in an article on creative webcam applications
in the summer edition of
"Internet idee", a Dutch magazine
devoted to the use of Internet, issue June-August 2001, pp. 64-65.
June 1, 2001, invited lecture titled "Seeing with Sound for the Blind: Is it Vision?"
at the VSPA conference on Consciousness at the University of
Amsterdam, The Netherlands, together with Margaret Boden, David Chalmers, Petra Stoerig,
Axel Cleeremans, Wim van de Grind and Ellert Nijenhuis.
April 23, 2001, The vOICe for Windows was featured in an article
"The vOICe: WebCam for the blind?!" at WebCam World.
November 2000, The vOICe Java applet was highlighted in
Electronic Musician magazine,
in an article titled
"Java Jive:
Is Java The Electronic Musician's Cup of Tea?", pp. 44 ff.
September 18, 2000, acting as invited External Examiner for the Leicester University
Ph.D. thesis of Michael Capp on "Alternative approaches to optophonic mappings". The
Viva Voce took place at Nene Centre for Research, Northampton, UK. Supervisor was
Phil Picton of University College Northampton.
September 2000, The vOICe was featured in
Weekly Websights
of IEEE Spectrum Online.
June 5, 2000, The vOICe for Windows software was featured in ACB Radio's
Main Menu, the online
technology show of the American Council of the Blind, presented by Jonathan Mosen.
Users of a streaming MP3 player such as WinAmp can listen directly to The vOICe
for Windows software review as MP3
streaming audio.
February 12, 2000, "Listening to Light", presentation and demonstration given by composer
and sonic artist Hugh Huddy at the
Sonic Arts Network
Conference 2000 (SAN '2000) at the University of Newcastle, UK. Hugh Huddy is a visually
impaired user of The vOICe for Windows.
January, 2000, Kenneth Downey wrote an independent user review on The vOICe for Windows for
Audyssey, Computer Games Accessible
to the Blind. Issue 21: January/February, 2000.
August 4, 1999, The vOICe for Windows featured by
WebCam World home and
WebCam Developers.

June 15, 1999, demonstrated The vOICe for Windows to Mike May and Mike Busboom from Arkenstone (now at the
Sendero Group).
It was a pleasant, enlightening and memorable meeting. This was before Mike May's partial vision
restoration through surgery, which was later featured in the BBC documentary "The Man Who Learnt to See" (2002).
April 1, 1999, a new seeingwithsound discussion group (mailing list) was created
for blind users of The vOICe technology.
March 15 - 20, 1999, The vOICe for Windows math and science
access features demonstrated by the
Trace R&D Center
at the
CSUN '99 conference in Los Angeles, USA.
Special thanks to Al Gilman and Madeleine Rothberg for doing the demo. Covered by
The Guardian
of Thursday March 18, in an article by Dan Jellinek titled "Designs for living" (p. B4).
The vOICe auditory display applet included on the Interactive Student
Tutorial CD with the third edition of Contemporary College Physics
by Jones and Childers, McGraw-Hill, 1999. Also listed in their
Online Library.
November 24, 1998, Wired News featured The vOICe for Windows in their Technology News article
"Seeing-Eye
Software", by Kristen Philipkoski.

An article by Vladimir Titov appeared in
Computerra (in Russian).
July 22, 1998 (Wednesday), at 2:15-4 pm, invited speaker at
SIGGRAPH 98
in Orlando, Florida, USA. Panel session Listen Up! Real-Time
Auditory Interfaces for the Real World with demo of The vOICe
for Windows during panel presentation. Further demonstrations
were given at the CAL (Creative Applications Lab) on July 22 and 23.
July 2, 1998, The vOICe was featured in the Dutch radio broadcast series
``Dingen Die Gebeuren.'' Topic: ``Kijken met je oren'' (KRO, Radio 1).
January 1, 1998, The vOICe for Windows for Windows-95/98/NT
(later named The vOICe for Windows) was launched,
offering vision substitution applications using a hifi stereo auditory display.
The real-time performance of this fully integrated program was optimized
for use with Pentium notebook PC's.
October 11, 1997, the BBC World Service science program
"The Works"
featured The vOICe in a radio interview.
October 8, 1997, WebCam of the Day website award at
DCN (www.dcn.com).
September, 1997, webcam support was added to The vOICe Java software.
August 8 - 10, 1997, the
New
Scientist declared The vOICe web site their ``Site of the Day'' on Planet Science.
May 30 - June 1, 1997, Tony Heyes (the inventor of the
Sonic Pathfinder) visited Peter Meijer and they discussed different approaches to
electronic travel aids and vision substitution.
October 1996, The vOICe Java auditory display applet was
launched, now illustrating The vOICe mapping in a truly interactive manner through on-line
polyphonic sound synthesis. The applet was also listed at Gamelan and JavaCats in the
multimedia - sound sections, and it was rated top 5% by
JARS.

May 2, 1996, working in parallel with The vOICe development, Peter Meijer received
his Ph.D. on Neural Network Applications in Device and
Subcircuit Modelling for Circuit Simulation.
March 25-28, 1996. The vOICe electronic equipment (hardware prototype) was demonstrated at
The Rank Prize Funds
Symposium on Technology to Assist the Blind and Visually Handicapped,
Grasmere, United Kingdom, March 25-28, 1996.
Exchange of ideas with insect vision expert Mandyam Srinivasan ("Srini") while
walking around the lake.
1996, old website, now obsolete: http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Peter_Meijer/
March 1995. Hans Albrecht, ``Maus aus dem Kopf - Wie electronische Hilfen Behinderten das
Leben erleichtern,'' Der Spiegel special, March 1995, pp. 143-144.
June 1994. Rosie Mestel,
"Hearing pictures, seeing sounds", New Scientist,
June 4, 1994, pp. 20-23.

October 1993. Carl Zimmer,
"Perception Watch - Substitute Sensations",
Discover Magazine, October 1993, pp. 24-26.
February 1992, key paper published on what is now called The vOICe approach:
P.B.L. Meijer, ``An Experimental System for Auditory
Image Representations,'' IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering,
Vol. 39, No. 2, pp. 112-121, Feb 1992. The paper was selected for reprint in
the 1993 IMIA Yearbook of Medical Informatics, pp. 291-300.
See also the Abstract and Literature page.
June 29, 1991, Barry Fox describes The vOICe in the New Scientist in
"Patents: A sound view".
July 27, 1990, filed U.S. Patent 5097326 on an "image-audio transformation system"
for the blind.