GPS for the visually impaired
It features VoicePins for personalized location annotations, an 'Explore Near Me' function for discovering nearby points of interest, comprehensive Google_TalkBack support, and a feedback-enabled compass.
[citation needed] The fruit of 8 years of research in collaboration with the CNRS, ANGEO is the only device capable of discretely, reliably guiding you when crossing areas where GPS satellites are masked.
iOS device usage has steadily increased among the blind and visually impaired population and numerous GPS apps targeting this user group have been developed since.
It uses data from Foursquare and OpenStreetMap and offers a large feature set covering the needs of blind and visually impaired travelers.
[3] It is based on Foursquare, OpenStreetMap, and Apple Maps data and supports the following features: iMove has been developed by EveryWare Technologies and was first released in January 2013.
[4] Seeing Eye is not available globally and is offered under various names: The Sendero apps include the following features: ViaOpta Nav is developed by Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation and was first released in August 2014.
ViaOpta Nav supports the following main features: The Loadstone project is developing an open source software for satellite navigation for blind and visually impaired users.
Many blind people around the world are using Nokia cell phones because there are two screen reader products for the S60 Symbian platform; Talks from Nuance Communications and Mobile Speak from the Spanish company Code Factory.
This product provides blind people with more independence from the trading policy and prices of the few global vendors of accessible satellite navigation solutions.
[citation needed] Mobile Geo is Code Factory's GPS navigation software for Windows Mobile-based Smartphones, Pocket PC phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs).
The system consists of a high precision GPS module connected to your smartphone and earphones that signals that the blind person stays along a pre-recorded digital path.
Fully portable (weight 600g), it offered features enabling a blind person to determine position, create routes and receive information on navigating to a destination.
The BrailleNote receives radio signals from satellites to chart the location of users and direct them to their destination with spoken information from the speech synthesizer.
The French company Kapsys offers a navigation system without a display, that works with speech input and output, called Kapten.
Blind people, using common text-to-speech enabled cell phones can query estimated time of arrival, locality, and current bus capacity using a web browser.
Trinetra, spearheaded by Professor Priya Narasimhan, is an ongoing project at the Electrical and Computer Engineering department of Carnegie Mellon University.
Additional research topics include item-level UPC and RFID identification while grocery shopping and indoor navigation in retail settings.
[citation needed] MoBIC means Mobility of Blind and Elderly people Interacting with Computers, which was carried out from 1994 to 1996 supported by the Commission of the European Union.
It was developing a route planning system which is designed to allow a blind person access to information from many sources such as bus and train timetables as well as electronic maps of the locality.
It integrates several technologies including wearable computers, voice recognition and synthesis, wireless networks, geographic information system (GIS) and GPS.
It augments contextual information to the visually impaired and computed optimized routes based on user preference, temporal constraints (e.g. traffic congestion), and dynamic obstacles (e.g. ongoing ground work, road blockade for special events).
Environmental conditions and landmark information queries from a spatial database along their route are provided on the fly through detailed explanatory voice cues.
In 1985, Jack Loomis, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, came up with the idea of a GPS-based navigation system for the visually impaired.
A second type of display, which the group calls a "haptic pointer interface", was inspired by the hand-held receiver used in the Talking Signs© system of remote signage.
Six published route-guidance studies indicate that spatial displays provide effective route guidance, entail less cognitive load than speech interfaces, and are generally preferred by visually impaired users.
The system is based on the integration of state of the art current technologies, including high-accuracy GPS positioning, GIS, electronic compass and wireless digital video transmission (remote vision) facility with an accuracy of 3~4m.
NOPPA navigation and guidance system was designed to offer public transport passenger and route information using GPS technology for the visually impaired.
The system provides an unbroken trip chain for a pedestrian using buses, commuter trains and trams in three neighbor cities' area.
The project consortium is composed by two research centers in computer sciences specialized in human-machine interaction (IRIT) for handicapped people and in auditory perception, spatial cognition, sound design and augmented reality (LIMSI).
This application for Symbian phones was designed especially to work with screen readers, such as Mobile Speak from Code Factory or TALKS from Nuance Communications and offers text-to-speech technology.
