When it comes to assessing the needs of persons with visual challenges, a team of Mississippi State researchers is getting an eyeful.

The university's Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Blindness and Low Vision maintains the National Consumer Feedback Network to give persons with impairments a voice in improving the blindness rehabilitation system.

"The purpose of the network is to help us know what persons with visual impairments really want and what helps them," said training associate Katherine E. Evans. "It also is a way for those who receive the services of state and federal rehabilitation programs to express their views and opinions of those programs."

The MSU center maintains a national database of more than 1,000 severely visually impaired individuals, compiled from responses to questionnaires distributed during the past decade.