Characterizing the spatial and temporal properties of the human visual system has long been hampered by the inability to gain direct access to functional brain measures. The use of high-resolution EEG has offered a solution to this dilemma and, in today’s talk, I will paint a broad landscape of the applications of high-resolution scalp EEG to the human cortical visual system in health and disease. First, I will demonstrate the advantage in signal acquisition and decoding from early visual cortex obtained with high resolution EEG data in a paradigm in which the spatial frequency and visual field of the visual input is systematically manipulated. I will then describe how a single region of cortical damage (‘neural silence’) can be identified by EEG in individuals with drug-resistant epilepsy who have undergone cortical resection, and how this approach can be generalized to identify a region of silence within-individual in each of the two hemispheres simultaneously. Last, I will present data showing the cortical response to visual input in blind individuals who are undergoing intervention for the restoration of retinal vision; decoding of EEG signals in response to visual input in the treated individuals is more accurate than in blind individuals without the intervention. Together, these findings highlight the large-scale applicability of EEG to studies of the human visual system and, also, demonstrate its potential for facilitating access to health care in underserved communities.