An invention made by a team of scientists in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) can be a crucial player to enable blind people to read any type of reading material.

Scientists in MIT said that they are developing what they dub as the FingerReader. The so-called FingerReader is a reading device that is worn on the finger -- just like a ring-- that will enable visually-impaired people to read printed materials.

The FingerReader has a small camera and a special finger movement tracker software installed to it. Using these two minute components, a blind reader can process and "read" information from any printed material they have access to.

Here's how it works: Once the user wear the FingerReader and points to a printed text on a reading material, the small camera in the device will scan the texts that the finger is pointing to, while the finger movement tracker software, on the other hand, will identify and process the data collected. Upon the data processing, the information will then be delivered as an audio to the user, and all of this will happen in real-time.

Pattie Mesa, an MIT professor and founder of the team that develops the FingerReader, says that it is like "reading with the tip of your finger and it's a lot more flexible, a lot more immediate than any solution that they have right now."

Although the development of the device already took three years long, the MIT scientists believe that they need to do more to maximize the use of the FingerReader. For one, the FingerReader may be able to process text gathered from printed materials, but not from touchscreen mediums such as smartphones and tablets.

The device, if successfully developed, will not replace the common reading and writing method for visually-impaired people called Braille. "Instead, the new device would enable users to access a vast number of books and other materials that are not currently available in Braille," says Roy Shilkrot, a member of the MIT team.