MOLinsight: A web portal for the processing of molecular structures by blind students.

Occasionally one comes across a web site that manages to combine being unusual, interesting and also useful. Thus www.molinsight.net is I think a unique chemistry resource for blind and visually impaired students.

If you think perhaps that it might be a little too specialised to be useful for you, go visit it first. It does not overwhelm, but contains much valuable information about topics such as open source chemical structure editors, property calculators and stereochemical utilities. Some topics really stand out. For example, Sonification of IR spectra describes the technique for converting an infrared spectrum into non-speech sounds of varying tones. I wonder if they have plans for sonified NMR spectra?

The project has been around for a little while and it’s really nice to see it well curated and up to date. In an era where $billions seems to be focused on augmented visual reality as the future means of delivering information, its nice to know that enabling chemistry via other senses is not forgotten.