Foundation fighting blindness is doing essentially that.  Fighting blindness.  They have no interest in improving quality of life for blind people and they make me seriously angry.  They do good research in vision health and they make money exploiting blind people doing so.  A win win for them.

NFB ocasionally funds a project.  AFB, CNIB and other agencies sometimes fund things, but primarily with an eye towards direct sales for recovering investment.  Some of the most interesting stuff on the market right now such as sunu, dotwatch and brailleme don't say where their funding came from, but I suspect the sources are as diverse as the companies and products.

The nfb keeps a log of misbegotten technologies built to help the blind.  White canes that deliver electric shock,  wayfinding devices that clap loudly so blind people can walk towards a sound.  That sort of nonsense.

So much of the stuff that gets built to help us gets nearly to production before any one asks whether it would be useful to the blind.  A world wide funding agency for blindness technology research could be either a godsend if it is run by the blind and keeps out the sensation mongers, or an atrocity if it uses fear of blindness to raise money and throws dollars at every shambling frankenstein cooked up in the basement of every dgooder who wants to help the blind but doesn't really want anything to do with blindness or blind people.

Best,

Erik