Category
Remembering Manfred MacKeben, Ph.D.
July 30th, 2026
Smith-Kettlewell remembers the life and legacy of Manfred Mackeben, Ph.D., a longtime SK vision scientist and a leading figure in low-vision research.
Seeing sound: What the eye sees when it views a sound wave
July 30th, 2026
Smith-Kettlewell’s Christopher Tyler and colleagues rendered a sound wave as moving dots and asked what people actually see. The answer: not one travelling wave, but crests moving forward and troughs moving backward — a split the brain builds for itself.
A Faster, More Reliable Way to Measure Visual Perception: New Smith-Kettlewell Study
July 16th, 2026
Smith-Kettlewell benchmarked the methods for measuring visual perception and found two — including one they built — that are faster, more accurate, and more reliable.
Smith-Kettlewell Study Links Cumulative Noise Exposure to Hearing Loss
July 13th, 2026
A Smith-Kettlewell study of 54 adults found that the noise we accumulate over a lifetime, even at everyday “safe” levels, is independently linked to poorer hearing, regardless of age. Researchers point to a simple questionnaire that could flag the risk years earlier.
YouDescribe Launches Two New Describer Interfaces for GAAD 2026
May 21st, 2026
YouDescribe, the volunteer-driven audio description platform for YouTube, today released a major upgrade timed to Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2026. The release introduces two new describer interfaces that give volunteers more ways to create high-quality audio descriptions for blind and low vision (BLV) audiences.
Oakland High School’s Students Visit Smith-Kettlewell
February 26th, 2026
On Friday, February 6th, students from Oakland High School’s Innovative Design and Engineering Academy visited Smith-Kettlewell. Students learned about different kinds of accessibility research directly from some of our scientists, giving them inspiration for their term projects.
Audiom Wins GAADY Award
September 19th, 2025