[NJTechDiv] Fwd: [tech-vi Announce List] Microsoft mobile app is making bus stops more accessible

Mon Apr 25 14:35:46 UTC 2022

Thank you, I will test out this app to see how it will work. The one thing a blind person really needs to find the bus stop.

From: Mario Brusco via NJTechDiv

Date: 04/25/2022, 10:18 AM

Subject: [NJTechDiv] Fwd: [tech-vi Announce List] Microsoft mobile app is making bus stops more accessible

-------- Forwarded Message --------
From: David Goldfield [mailto:david.goldfield at outlook.com]
Subject: [tech-vi Announce List] Microsoft mobile app is making bus
stops more accessible
Date: Monday, April 25, 2022, 9:47 AM
To: List <tech-vi at groups.io (mailto:tech-vi at groups.io)>
COOL BLIND TECH - Monday, April 25, 2022 at 9:01 AM

Microsoft mobile app is making bus stops more accessible

A team at Schepens Eye Research Institute of Mass Eye and Ear, led by
Associate Professor Gang Luo, has been focusing on vision assistive
technology for over a decade, running research studies on technology
development, intervention, evaluation, and human factors in mobility for
people who are blind or low vision. While transit agencies have a
mandate to improve accessibility to public transportation as part of the
Americans with Disability Act, opportunities exist to improve existing
technologies and further remove barriers. Developing a cost-effective
tool was paramount for the team in their aim to make bus stops more
accessible and easily identifiable to all.

In their effort, they have developed and released a free app called All
Aboard <https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/all-aboard/id1580638469> which
prototypes 10 bus transit services across the US, Canada, UK and Germany.

How does the app work?

To use the app, a user needs to hold their mobile phone in upright
orientation in proximity to the stop. The service will make a sonar-like
sound to indicate it’s searching for the bus stop sign, followed by a
beeping sound to indicate the bus stop was identified. The latter has
different levels of pitch roughly representing various distances as
demonstrated in this video tutorial.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYQd5DpsHys>

How does the app recognize bus stop signs?

The All Aboard app used deep neural networks to recognize bus stop
signs, with the assumption the user is aware of the bus route they wish
to take and is in proximity of the bus stop. By using object
recognition, it can correctly identify bus signs which have the same
design for a particular transit, while ignoring the exact route number
on the signs. For each bus transit, around 5,000 to 10,000 bus stop sign
images were collected, labelled, and used to train the neural network to
automatically learn the features of the signage patterns.
Consequentially, the neural network is capable of differentiating the
bus stop signs from other objects and other types of road signs in
images. For the recognition neural network to run in real time on a
mobile device with lower computational power, a lightweight neural
network was created, allowing processing on a mobile device.

What has been the feedback from users?

Since its release in December 2021, the app has been used by more than
130 users in over 1,500 instances across the US, Canada, Germany and the
UK. The preliminary results are encouraging; based on the team’s
research, the rate of successful navigation of main stream navigation
apps averages at 60%, while All Aboard had a 95% detection of bus stops
signs. The main stream apps failed mostly in urban area with many high
rises. Even for successful navigation instances, All Aboard was able to
lead users to bus stops more precisely.

What is next up for the app?

Next up for the app is a plan to expand coverage of bus transit services
to more cities in the US, as well as make it available on Android, and
build new futures for navigation such as subways, and other popular
destinations.

Source
<https://blogs.microsoft.com/accessibility/all-aboard-an-ai-based-mobile-app-is-making-bus-stops-more-accessible/>

https://coolblindtech.com/microsoft-mobile-app-is-making-bus-stops-more-accessible/
<https://coolblindtech.com/microsoft-mobile-app-is-making-bus-stops-more-accessible/>

David Goldfield
Assistive Technology Specialist

Feel free to visit my Web site
WWW.DavidGoldfield.info (http://WWW.DavidGoldfield.info)

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