[Electronics-Talk] FW: [GTTsupport] Indoor Wayfinding with Access Explorer from American Printing House for the Blind: One Step Forward AccessWorld

Wed Sep 11 08:20:46 UTC 2019

Original Message: 
From: "Albert Ruel" <albertruel at gmail.com>
To: <GTTSupport at Groups.io>
Subject: [GTTsupport] Indoor Wayfinding with Access Explorer from
American Printing House for the Blind: One Step Forward AccessWorld
Date: 
Tue, 10 Sep 2019 20:23:17 -0700

Indoor Wayfinding with Access Explorer from American Printing House for
the
Blind: One Step Forward | AccessWorld

afb.org

Indoor Wayfinding with Access Explorer from American Printing House for
the
Blind: One Step Forward | AccessWorld

Author Bill Holton

9-12 minutes

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main region

article

Bill Holton

Remember the first time you went to the airport alone? Somehow you made
it
to the ticket counter, where they summoned a helpful assistant who gave
you

a choice: Ride in a wheelchair to your gate, despite the fact that you
have
two perfectly operational feet, or ride on the "ding-ding" machine,
traveling

approximately two miles an hour past the smells of coffee, Cinnabon's,
and
all sorts of other treats you can't stop to enjoy. And heaven forbid you
should

have to use the restroom.

These days, using GPS navigation and one of many accessible wayfinding
apps,
it's not only possible but relatively easy to find and catch a bus or
rideshare

downtown, reorient yourself, and use a cane or guide dog to make your way
to
the front steps of City Hall, the local science museum, or the airport.

Of course all of this accessible navigation usually ends at the front
door
of your destination, and you either have to memorize ahead of time the
route

you need to take or ask for help getting around inside. GPS signals don't
travel well inside buildings and, even if they did, without adequate
mapping

the signals are all but worthless.

A Brief History of Indoor Wayfinding

Over the years there have been many attempts and approaches to offer
indoor
wayfinding. "One of the very first involved dead reckoning," says Mike
May,

founder of 

Sendero Group,

one of the first developers of accessible navigation and wayfinding. "You
would start from a known position, and then your steps would be tracked
using

a compass and your position updated." According to May, "the trouble with
this system was that you needed expensive, high-end compasses, and any
errors

were magnified the further you traveled."

Other indoor wayfinding efforts were made using broadcast radio and TV
signals, Wi-Fi signals, RFID chips, and even unique optical signals
emitted
by florescent

light tube ballasts.

One of the first real breakthroughs in indoor wayfinding came with the
arrival of iBeacons from Apple. The beacons transmit an RF signal that
apps
can

use to determine location and other information via Bluetooth. "We had
great
hopes we could piggyback on these signals and use them to help map indoor

spaces." says May. Unfortunately, beacons have yet to reach the necessary
critical mass of popularity. "McDonald's did not broadcast $1 burgers to
people

walking past the store, and when I visited an Apple store, none of the
employees even knew how they worked," says May. "The public wasn't asking
for them,

so venues and companies were reluctant to make the investment."

According to May, two of the beacons strengths also turned out to be two
of
their greatest weaknesses. "They are small, inexpensive, and battery
powered,

so they don't need a nearby power source. Also, the technology is still
evolving at a rapid pace." May works remotely from his home in Wichita,
where three

years ago the city installed five hundred beacons marking bus stops.
"Now,
three years along, the batteries are running down, and the question is,
do
they

replace the batteries or update to newer technology beacons, and if they
do,
do they stick with batteries or spend the extra money for direct power
connections?"

It's not uncommon for technology originally introduced to the public at
large to become modified and made accessible to those with visual
impairments.

GPS navigation itself was such a technology, as are the accessible
computers
and smartphones most of us rely on for our education and employment. But
it

also works the other way around. A technology or modification originally
designed for the disabled turns out to offer value to the general
population.

Curb cuts originally introduced for wheelchair users are loved by parents
pushing strollers. Computer dictation was a godsend to people suffering
from

repetitive stress injuries, but these days it's everywhere, as are
text-to-speech and optical character recognition technologies, both of
which
were originally

developed for the benefit of the blind.

Access Explorer: Indoor Wayfinding Centered on Serving the Needs of
People
with Visual Impairments

Since the early attempts at wayfinding beacons didn't inspire public
demand,
a number of companies and entrepreneurs began coming at the problem from
the

opposite, more traditional direction: developing the technology for
people
with visual impairments and then seeing where things went. This is why
the
American

Printing House for the Blind (APH) recently spun out its Nearby Explorer
assets into a new for-profit company called 

Access Explorer.

"Our goal is to make indoor wayfinding both cheaper and more available
for
the blind, while at the same time offering value to the sighted community
as

well," says May, who recently joined the Access Explorer team as Chief
Evangelist.

The company now offers to map and tag indoor venues, such as airports,
government buildings, and other facilities where accessibility is a
mandated
concern.

"Hopefully, other places will begin to see the benefits and begin
offering
wayfinding also," says May, who notes that the blind aren't the only ones
who

might need to know where the nearest bathroom is located, or how to get
from
here to Gate 25 in the airport. After that, it's just a matter of a few
small

steps from "Siri, where is baggage claim" to "Siri, where in this store
can
I find that set of towels that I heard is on sale?"

As part of their investment, APH has transferred their Nearby Explorer
and
the free Nearby Explorer Online to the new startup. Already it includes
indoor

wayfinding where available. One of the new company's pilot projects is at
the 

Louisville Airport. 

You can take a virtual tour right now. See the end of this article for
instructions.

Working Towards Consistency in Indoor Wayfinding

There are several different companies working on indoor wayfinding,
including 

Blindsquare,

a popular wayfinding app for the blind that also offers indoor navigation
for several airports and other facilities where beacons have been
installed
and

properly tagged. Hoping to avoid inconsistencies across different systems
and apps, the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) recently released a
set
of

best-practices and voluntary standards for the implementation of this
technology to guide app developers and owners of indoor locations such as
airports,

railway stations, convention centers and museums.

"The CTA standard will help us create the same set of audio instructions
for
accessing a metro train or bus whether the individual is in Washington,
DC

or Los Angeles," says David Shaffer, access policy officer of the
Washington
Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, and member of the committee that
established

the guidelines.

The complete standard is 

available for free on the CTA site.

Take a Virtual Indoor Tour of the Louisville Airport Using Nearby
Explorer

You can use the free Nearby Explorer Online app for either 

iOS

or 

Android

to take a virtual indoor tour of the Louisville airport. With the app
installed, follow these steps:

list of 9 items

1. Open Nearby Explorer Online In Settings, set your Search Provider to
OpenStreetMap. Make sure you have downloaded the area you want to
virtually
explore

in the OpenStreeMap Manager under Settings. For the Louisville Airport,
you
will need to download Kentucky.

2. Search for "Louisville International Airport." If you are more than 30
miles away, you need to search for the address: 600 Terminal Dr,
Louisville,

KY.

3. Select the Airport Terminal

4. In the pop-up menu, select "Virtual Go To"

5. Search again

6. On the Search screen, use the up escalator icon (top right) to go up a
level

7. Go up another level to get to level 1

8. Select an interesting POI or Point of Interest (such as the Main
Entrance)

9. In the pop-up menu, select "Virtual Go To" At this point, you are in
virtual mode at the front entrance to the Airport. You can use the GeoBeam
feature

to identify nearby POIs. Hold your phone sideways, with the screen facing
your left side and the back of your phone facing your right side, and the
top

of the phone pointing in the direction you want to explore. As you swivel
around, you will hear announcements about the POIs you are pointing at.

list end

According to Access Explorer CEO Jose Gaztambide, "We are planning to
release a new, free indoor navigation application by the end of 2019 that
builds

on many of the accomplishments of Nearby Explorer. Most notably, the
application will provide turn-by-turn navigation for indoor spaces,
integrating a

'human-in-the-loop' component to provide live assistance. It will take
advantage of additional signals such as phone sensors and Wi-Fi signals in
the positioning

algorithm to offer more accurate localization and positioning. The new
application will also feature a more friendly interface for both sighted
and
non-sighted

users, and an easier learning curve for both outdoor and indoor
wayfinding."

This article is made possible in part by generous funding from the James
H.
and Alice Teubert Charitable Trust, Huntington, West Virginia.

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