Several technologies, from internet-enabled phones, to touchscreen and dual screen handsets, it’s all been evolved in the present technology enhanced world. Though these developments are applaudable, what happens to the physically handicapped individuals who attimes find it difficult to operate the simplest of functions in a phone or maybe are unable to use it at all? Here’s some hope!

British researchers have developed a robotic pen that they say may enable blind people to write clearly and consistently.

All that one will have to do to use McSig – as the “force-feedback” pen has been named – is to gently guide one’s hand.

Stephen Brewster, an expert at the University of Glasgow, says the system uses an off-the-shelf haptic device by US-based SensAble Technologies, called the Phantom Omni – a stylus mounted at the end of a motorised arm, which is capable of moving and resisting movement in three dimensions.

A British boffin has invented a revolutionary sat nav that directs guide dogs for blind people.

The 500-pound gizmo, which will be launched this summer, clips on to the dog's harness and vibrates on the left or right side to tell the handler which direction to go in.

The blind user announces their destination into a sat nav microphone. The vibrating receiver then indicates how to "steer" the dog.

Product design student Jason Perkins developed Peepo after working with the Cardiff Institute for the Blind for a year, reports The Sun.

Roger Behm lost his sight at 16, the victim of an inherited disease that destroyed his retinas. Both of his eyes were surgically removed.

Now 55, Behm has made himself at home in a sightless world. He started his own business in Janesville selling devices that help the blind cope with day-to-day tasks. He and his wife have raised five children and just adopted another child from China who is also blind. He fishes, canoes, camps and scuba dives.

The first flexible retinal implant could restore some vision to people with certain forms of visual impairment.

Conditions such as age-related macular degeneration occur when some of the photoreceptors in the eye stop functioning properly. But as other parts of the eye still work, it should be possible to restore vision using an implant that mimics the photoreceptor layer, says Rostam Dinyari at Stanford University in California.

To achieve this, an implant needs to convert a light signal into an electrical pulse – in other words, perform like a solar cell.