[Nd-talk] FW: [ATI] The Blind Have High Hopes for Self-Driving Cars

Thu Oct 13 03:14:56 UTC 2016

Well, I would be very upset if you didn't all share in my enthusiasm! Now, I think I will only have one more obstacle and that will be remembering where I put the keys to the Google car.

Have a good evening everybody!

Jesse

Sent from my iPhone

> On Oct 12, 2016, at 8:29 PM, diverson via Nd-talk <nd-talk at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> I agree. I want one.
> However I think we'll transition in to an Uber-like world where nobody will own cars at all but you'll pay or subscribe to a service which sends you a car when you want one.
> The American Car Culture is already on life support. The days when a Kid could get a car to tinker with are already going. I have done care repairs myself including installing a starter on a small pickup truck. My son can still check oil, but his kid won't even know where the engine is located in his ultra-modern computerized car. Even if he still has to drive it himself.
>  
>  
> From: Nd-talk [mailto:nd-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Charlene Ota via Nd-talk
> Sent: Wednesday, October 12, 2016 6:25 PM
> To: 'North Dakota Talk Discussion List' <nd-talk at nfbnet.org>
> Cc: Charlene Ota <caota4 at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Nd-talk] FW: [ATI] The Blind Have High Hopes for Self-Driving Cars
>  
> Hey, Jesse, guess you could say you’re a tab bit excited about that?  Well, ME TOOOOOOOO!!!!!!
>  
> From: Nd-talk [mailto:nd-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Jesse Shirek via Nd-talk
> Sent: Wednesday, October 12, 2016 4:37 PM
> To: 'North Dakota Talk Discussion List' <nd-talk at nfbnet.org>
> Cc: Jesse Shirek <jesseshirek at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Nd-talk] FW: [ATI] The Blind Have High Hopes for Self-Driving Cars
>  
> Yes, Yes,
> Yes,
> Yes,
> Yes,
> Yes,
> Yes,
> Yes,
> Yes,
> Yes,
> Yes,
> Yes,
> Yes,
> Yes,
> Yes,
> Yes,
> Yes,
> Yes,
> Yes,
> awesome,
> awesome,
> awesome,
> awesome,
> awesome,
> awesome,
> awesome,
> awesome,
> awesome,
> awesome,
> awesome,
> awesome,
> awesome,
> awesome,
> awesome,
> awesome,
> awesome,
> awesome,
> awesome,
> awesome,
> awesome,
> awesome,
> awesome,
> awesome,
> awesome,
> awesome,
> awesome,
> awesome,
> awesome,
> awesome,
> awesome,
>  
> Wooooooo hooooooooooooooo!
>  
> I love you!
>  
>  
> From: Nd-talk [mailto:nd-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Sherry Shirek via Nd-talk
> Sent: Wednesday, October 12, 2016 4:27 PM
> To: 'North Dakota Talk Discussion List' <nd-talk at nfbnet.org>
> Cc: Sherry Shirek <sherrybeth7 at gmail.com>
> Subject: [Nd-talk] FW: [ATI] The Blind Have High Hopes for Self-Driving Cars
>  
> It looks promising…
> Let’s keep our fingers crossed that we will be driving real soon <smiles>
>  
> Sherry
>  
> From: ATI [mailto:ati-bounces at moblind.org] On Behalf Of Darrel
> Sent: Wednesday, October 12, 2016 2:32 PM
> To: 'Adaptive technology information and support.' <ati at moblind.org>
> Subject: [ATI] The Blind Have High Hopes for Self-Driving Cars
>  
> The Blind Have High Hopes for Self-Driving Cars
> Advocates for the visually impaired are talking to companies and legislators about developing vehicles they will be able to drive independently.
> During a few days in August, the parking lot at the Perkins School for the Blind morphed into a test zone where a golf-cart-like vehicle transported students
> and staff members, guided by a laptop. It was a prototype from 
> Optimus Ride,
> a startup in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that is developing self-driving technologies for electric vehicles.
> Though the trip was short and followed a programmed course, it generated excitement at Perkins, the country’s oldest school for the blind, which serves
> 200 blind, visually impaired, and deaf-blind students on its campus and hundreds more through programs in local schools. Advocates for the blind—at Perkins
> and beyond—say driverless cars could revolutionize their lives, provided the vehicles are designed to be accessible. As the promise of a truly autonomous
> car draws closer, organizations representing the blind are taking a more active role in shaping the vehicles and software being developed.
>  
> “Autonomous vehicles will be transformative for people who are blind,” says Dave Power, Perkins’s president and CEO. “For the first time, they will be
> able to get to school, work, and community activities independently, regardless of distance. There is tremendous enthusiasm about it, both here and nationally,
> among the blind.”
> Image: National Federation of the Blind president Mark Riccobono preparing to drive the car developed by the organization’s Blind Driver Challenge in 2011.
>  
> Advocates want companies to make their autonomous vehicles disability friendly rather than produce special cars for the visually impaired, which would
> probably be extremely expensive. Power, a former technology executive, knows the blind community can’t assume that autonomous-vehicle makers will take
> their needs into account. So he has begun inviting technology companies to Perkins’s campus to make presentations and gather feedback. “We want to help
> these vendors build accessibility into their designs and think about blind people up front,” says Power.
> Optimus Ride was the first company to respond to Power’s invitation. During its visits, the startup test-drove its vehicle on Perkins’s 38-acre property.
> It also held a brainstorming session to learn how driverless cars can best serve blind people and whether they could be deployed as shuttles on large campuses.
> Perkins employees say they gave the startup numerous suggestions, such as making sure to provide adequate floor space for service dogs. They also emphasized
> the need for a nonvisual interface that passengers could use to communicate with the car. For example, a touch-screen-controlled vehicle could accommodate
> blind users by integrating voice-over technology or haptic feedback.
> The setup could mimic the gesture-based screen readers that blind people use to navigate their smartphones and apps. In fact, the Perkins group recommended
> that Optimus Ride create an app for its future users. Jim Denham, Perkins’s educational technology coordinator, says he anticipates using an app to do
> everything from summoning a car to instructing it to make an unscheduled stop and wait while he unloads his belongings. The app, in turn, could give users
> periodic status updates about the vehicle’s progress and notify them when they’ve reached their destination.
> Beyond vehicle and software design, the blind community wants to influence regulations governing driverless cars. The National Federation of the Blind (NFB),
> the country’s largest organization for blind people, has championed the idea of cars for the blind since the early 2000s, when it organized a 
> Blind Driver Challenge
>  to encourage universities to create nonvisual interfaces for cars. NFB spokesperson Chris Danielsen says the group has since asked Google to incorporate
> accessibility features into its self-driving car. The NFB also plans to attend an upcoming conference hosted by Daimler, at the invitation of the German
> auto giant, and to submit comments on the automated-vehicle rules that the U.S. Department of Transportation 
> released recently.
>  
> The American Council of the Blind (ACB), a national grassroots advocacy group, has been tracking state laws to ensure that they don’t prohibit blind people
> from using autonomous vehicles. When Nevada included restrictive language related to blind people in its draft legislation, the organization asked lawmakers
> to make the wording less specific, according to ACB president Kim Charlson. “We don’t think being blind should be a reason why we can’t take advantage
> of these cars,” she adds. “On the contrary, we think it’s a reason we should use them.”
> Charlson, like other advocates for the blind community, is looking forward to a future of fully autonomous vehicles in which a blind person would not need
> to do any type of driving and authorities would be alerted if the car got into trouble. Blind people say that riding in semi-autonomous cars, alongside
> sighted passengers able to serve as drivers, would not expand their current transportation options. After all, they can already get lifts from friends
> or family members, take taxis or Ubers, or use paratransit vans, which provide shared door-to-door transportation to people with disabilities. “If we still
> h    ave to have another person in the vehicle, we’re no better off than now, regardless of how sophisticated the technology is,” points out NFB’s Danielsen.
> “Autonomous vehicles are going to be the future,” adds Charlson. “My objective is to make sure people who are blind get to equally be part of that future.”
>  
>  
>  
>  
>  
> Thanks,
> Darrel
> President, Adaptive Technology inc.
> http://ati.moblind.org
> Please visit me and my friends at: http://ww4b.org
>  
>  
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