[NJTechDiv] Fwd: [tech-vi Announce List] All Aboard Is Making Bus Stops More Accessible For Blind Bus Riders - Assistive Technology Blog

[Mario Brusco]

-------- Forwarded Message --------
From: David Goldfield [mailto:david.goldfield at outlook.com]
Subject: [tech-vi Announce List] All Aboard Is Making Bus Stops More 
Accessible For Blind Bus Riders - Assistive Technology Blog
Date: Monday, May 2, 2022, 8:55 AM
To: List <tech-vi at groups.io>
All Aboard Is Making Bus Stops More Accessible For Blind Bus Riders - 
Assistive Technology Blog

https://assistivetechnologyblog.com/2022/05/all-aboard-bus-stops-accessibility.html 
<https://assistivetechnologyblog.com/2022/05/all-aboard-bus-stops-accessibility.html>


   All Aboard Is Making Bus Stops More Accessible For Blind Bus Riders

Venkat <https://assistivetechnologyblog.com/author/assist26_wp>October 
10, 2016

//May 2, 2022//Vision 
<https://assistivetechnologyblog.com/category/vision>//0

a blind person wearing a blue jacket is seen pointing their phone 
towards a bus stop sign from a distance 
<https://assistivetechnologyblog.com/2022/05/all-aboard-bus-stops-accessibility.html/picture4> 


If you are a bus rider, you have probably occasionally missed your bus 
because you were standing just a few steps away from the bus stop, the 
bus approached, the driver thought you weren’t going to get on, and they 
drove off! (it’s happened to me for sure!) For the visually impaired, 
this is a much bigger problem (“the last 10 meter problem”) because GPS 
apps can bring them no closer than 10 meters from their target which may 
not be enough. Someone could possibly feel a pole with their cane and 
think it’s a bus stop, but it actually might not be. Identifying 
physical bus stops is not an easy task for people with visual impairment.

To help overcome this issue, a team of researchers at Schepens Eye 
Research Institute of Mass Eye and Ear have built an app that looks for 
bus stop signs through the phone camera. The user has to hold their 
phone in an upright position and point it generally in the direction of 
the bus stop. The app starts emitting sonar sounds indicating it is 
looking for the bus stop sign. Once identified, the sound’s pitch keeps 
going higher the closer the user gets to the sign. This free app, called 
All Aboard <https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/all-aboard/id1580638469>, uses 
artificial intelligence to recognize bus stop sign in multiple cities. 
Between 5,000 and 10,000 bus stop sign images were used for a given city 
to help the AI model identify signage patterns for bus stops.

Since its launch in December 2021, the app has been used by more than 
130 users in over 1500 instances in the US, Canada, Germany and the UK. 
In a pilot test before the launch 
<https://iovs.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2776044>, the app 
developers tried it against Google Maps with 20 bus stops in the Los 
Angeles area (10 in downtown amidst high rises and 10 in suburbs) and 
found that Google Maps’ successful navigation rate with Google Maps was 
60% (failed to localize 7 stops in downtown and 1 in suburbs) whereas 
the All Aboard app’s success rate was 95%. (failed to identify one 
downtown stop)

A combination of the Soundscape 
<https://assistivetechnologyblog.com/2015/02/microsofts-3d-soundscape-technology-can.html> 
app and All Aboard can really enhance a blind user’s experience of 
walking to a bus stop to catch their bus while being aware of their 
surroundings.

At the time of writing this post, this app works with the following 
transit service: California AC Transit, Chicago CTA,, Germany Bus and 
Tram, London bus services, Los Angeles Metro, MBTA Boston, New York MTA, 
Seattle Metro, Toronto TTC, and Washington DC Metrobus. Because this app 
is built using artificial intelligence and generally understands what 
bus stop signs look like, it might be worth a shot to just try it in 
your city (if it’s not in the list above) and see if it works!

Watch the video below to see how All Aboard works.

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



       David Goldfield
Assistive Technology Specialist

Feel free to visit my Web site
WWW.DavidGoldfield.info