by Daniel Parker, RDPFS Contributor:
The advent of smartphones and related technology has given birth to a number of tools to help people with vision loss navigate their environment with greater confidence. While there is no substitute for working with a trained orientation and mobility instructor and learning foundational skills, apps can be very helpful when traveling to a new destination on one’s own, practicing existing routes, and retracing steps when lost. This article provides an overview of current turn-by-turn navigation apps, both mainstream and made for those with blindness and vision impairments. Mainstream products like Apple Maps and Google Maps offer walking routes and directions, presenting them slightly differently. Apple Maps uses audio tones to illustrate distance from the route, uses exclusively left and right directions, and distance is measured in tens of feet. Google Maps sometimes uses compass directions, has no tones, and distances are measured in individual feet. Though the compass directions can be confusing, the individual feet may be more immediately helpful in assessing if one is on the right course.
Apps Developed for People Who Are Blind
Next are GPS apps specific to individuals who are blind. Those most used are Goodmaps Outdoors, Lazarillo, Oko, and Seeing AI. The last two advertise the use of artificial intelligence (AI). If the user wears a headset, these apps will announce directions in either the left or right ear, depending on where the destination is. They allow setting points of interest (POIs), which may be home, work, stores, restaurants, transit stops, parks and others. With Oko in particular, the user can raise their phone at an intersection and be notified when the walk sign is on. Goodmaps Outdoors can give directions via the clock face method. Lastly are two apps descended from a discontinued Microsoft project called Soundscape, which would let the user virtually explore their environment with audio cues and plan routes with its street preview tool. Perhaps most helpful was the “audio beacon,” a sound that played in the background from a certain distance to the destination and changed based on direction, allowing the person to know exactly where they are in relation to the POI. Various categories of places, such as transit stops, crosswalks, and other landmarks, triggered individual sound effects. The two descendent apps are the open-source Soundscape Community, with a very similar interface to the original project; and VoiceVista, which has been redesigned and has many layers of customizations. More information can be found at the AppleVis links above, and by listening to podcasts on Oko and VoiceVista. Future articles will discuss apps for transportation help and indoor navigation.
