Blind sailor Ed Gallagher develops webcam technology that allows him to take his boat out solo

From the Wall Street Journal:

SAN FRANCISCO — When Ed Gallagher goes sailing, he wears a webcam on his head, straps a netbook computer to his hip and hops onto a boat with his dog. Then he relies on Herb Meyer, a skipper back on land, to watch the live, streaming webcam video and give him instructions.

Mr. Gallagher, who is 59 years old, is blind. "I used to listen to the old blind guys who had been sailing for years say you don't really need your eyes," he says. "I wanted the ability for blind people to truly sail by themselves without a whole crew."

Mr. Gallagher's sailing experiment was on view one Sunday afternoon recently. While Mr. Meyer, who is also disabled, parked his wheelchair at the bar in the San Francisco Yacht Club with a laptop, cellphone and a beer, Mr. Gallagher was in a 36-foot sailboat with his guide dog, Genoa.

"Tack left, Ed. Tack left," Mr. Meyer spoke into his headset. "Ed, you're not listening to me. I'm the captain. Tack left. Oh, I lost him again," he said after the screen went dark from a weak signal. For Mr. Meyer, who still sails after a boating accident left him wheelchair-bound 17 years ago, it was like playing a videogame.

The sailing experiment is part of Mr. Gallagher's broader project to offer a remote guidance system to help the blind perform everyday tasks from reading expiration dates on food packaging to crossing streets (since bicycles and hybrid cars are difficult to hear). In the past four years, the retired building contractor has performed a number of dangerous—and ordinary—tasks using the system.

He has driven a car through the Rocky Mountains, fired handguns, practiced archery and repaired his broken thermostat—all the while receiving instructions from a sighted person miles away.

Mr. Gallagher's vision loss prevents him from obtaining a drivers license, so it is illegal for him to operate a car. But a spokesman from the California Department of Boating and Waterways says no federal or California laws prohibit him from recreational boating as long as he "obeys the rules of the road."

Mr. Gallagher says he hopes that with his system and others like it, visually impaired users will feel more comfortable working outside their homes. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Population Survey estimated that in August 2010, approximately 75% of nearly 4 million people over the age of 16 who reported being blind were "not in the labor force."

"Technology is a tremendous liberator for people with vision loss and most people with disabilities," says Mark Richert, director of public policy for the American Foundation for the Blind, in Washington.

Mr. Gallagher's system is controversial, and it isn't foolproof. Last March, the San Francisco resident suffered a bad concussion in a skiing accident in Aspen, Colo., when he hit a big rock that his guide hadn't seen, flipped over and landed headfirst. It took him months to recover.

"I've been going skiing there for years," he says. "After this accident, I think it's time to hang up my skis."

Mr. Gallagher, who grew up in Lake Fenton, Mich., lost his sight 15 years ago to cytomegalovirus retinitis, or CMV retinitis, a rare viral infection. An avid sailor, he says that he thought at the time that his vision loss "was the end of sailing."

But Mr. Gallagher regained his sea legs when the Department of Veterans Affairs suggested that he join a nonprofit organization called Bay Area Association of Disabled Sailors in 2000. The group offers specially engineered dinghies that allow its quadriplegic and paraplegic members to sail solo.

That inspired Mr. Gallagher to pioneer a system that would achieve the same goal for the blind. In 2006, he teamed up with psychiatrist Richard Baldwin and wheelchair-bound sailor Paul Walker, who were also involved with BAADS, to create Genoa Services, which he named after his dog.

Developing it was slow at first, with the trio depending on donated equipment and a shoestring budget. By 2007, they had created a rudimentary system using a laptop and a bike helmet with a bulky video camera strapped on top. But with improvements in technologies like Wi-Fi, the system progressed to include sunglasses with a webcam embedded inside, and a small Asustek Computer Inc. netbook.

During a recent demonstration at the LightHouse for the Blind in San Francisco, a Northern California blind-services organization, a blind woman, Sandra Abeyta, 46, struggled to hold back tears after she was able to distinguish between classic yellow mustard and Dijon in the cafeteria refrigerator using the system.

"Genoa could really improve people's lives," she said.

But not everyone is excited by Mr. Gallagher's invention. Bryan Bashin, chief executive of San Francisco LightHouse, says the system could prevent blind people from learning basic, nonvisual survival skills. "This could lead students down the wrong path," he says. "I fear that they will think having someone sighted see for you is the only solution to blindness."

Mr. Gallagher remains undeterred by skeptics. He says Genoa Services has attracted small amounts of cash from investors—and equipment from device maker Logitech Inc. and its founder Daniel Borel. Mr. Gallagher is applying for a government stimulus grant.

Meantime, Mr. Gallagher is having fun with his system. Last month, he took Genoa (the system and the dog) to a San Francisco park for a game of fetch. He hurled a tennis ball across the park, all the while being guided by his assistant Isabel Tifft, who was about 15 miles away in Alameda, Calif.

Genoa scurried after the ball but refused to return it to Mr. Gallagher. (Fetching isn't generally part of guide dog training.) "Where's the ball?" Mr. Gallagher asked aloud.

Some people standing nearby who thought he was talking to them called out, "It's to your left, a little further." Mr. Gallagher quickly replied, "I know where it is." To their astonishment, he quickly picked up the ball.

"They must have thought I was talking to myself or had gone completely crazy," Mr. Gallagher said, laughing.