[NFBCS] Seeking Expertise for Feasibility of EarPilot Collaboration

[Louis Maher]

From: Hiser, Charles
Sent: Wednesday, February 4, 2026 12:08 PM
To: 'johnmillerphd at hotmail.com' <johnmillerphd at hotmail.com<mailto:johnmillerphd at hotmail.com>>
Subject: Seeking Expertise for Feasibility of EarPilot Collaboration

Dear John,

My name is Charles Hiser, one of the new Accessibility Excellence Advocates on staff at the NFB Jernigan Institute. I was recently asked to collaborate with a small team of pilots in Minnesota who are designing an app that translates data from iPhone sensors into audio cues to enable a blind person to fly a plane. They are seeking technical expertise with the hopes of creating an interface that would reduce latency in the delivery of information and improve the accuracy, as well as be intuitive for blind people in a cockpit setting. They are aiming to test the idea on simulators but also want to explore how this could be brought to an aircraft. The ultimate goal is a kind of "Blind Flyer Challenge" modeled on the philosophies of the Blind Driver Challenge that the NFB most recently demonstrated with Dan Parker in 2022. I am reaching out to you to tap the members of the Science and Engineering Division to put together a small team of people who could speak to the theoretical feasibility of these goals.

While EarPilot has been proven to convey the information necessary to successfully and safely complete limited bank, pitch and turn maneuvers, it is still in the early testing phase of its lifecycle. There is no mechanism to pass information to a blind pilot to complete more drastic maneuvers, taxiing, landing or take-off. A sighted pilot must establish the aircraft in clear practice airspace before passing control to the blind pilot. Because of this, I would like to be clear in saying that the goal at the moment is to explore the potential of this project. This is not yet an endorsement by or partnership with the Federation.

My hope is to gather some experts with experience to brainstorm the practicalities of constructing and testing an interface and related components for a simulator setup that blind people could use to practice the phases of flight, as well as a more far-reaching goal of rigging an aircraft with necessary sensors to pass data with as little latency through a similar interface, incorporating the EarPilot developer in the process. We would then conference with the EarPilot team to talk over the concept and next steps. Ideally, we would come away from the session (or sessions depending on how things play out) with estimations of functional requirements, timelines, rough costs and an overall understanding of what would be needed to accomplish these goals. If all goes well, I would then propose this to President Riccobono to seek approval for collaboration.

Transparently, I do not know what backgrounds would be the most useful for SED to bring to this initiative. Your understanding of the membership would be invaluable in reaching out to potential interested parties. Please stress that this is still in very early stages and is not yet an NFB project, but we hope to understand enough of the practical pieces to make a strong proposal to President Riccobono in hopes of officially collaborating with the team.

Information about EarPilot, including the open source code of the iPhone app and demo videos, can be found at:
https://eclecticode.com/earpilot/

Thanks so much for any help and connections you can provide. As an aviation enthusiast, I would love to see this dream become reality. It would be a powerful message for the NFB to send, of course, but more to the point, it would be another concrete demonstration that blind people can do anything we want with the right tools at our disposal.


Thanks,
Charles Hiser CPACC
JAWS Certified, NVDA Certified Expert
Accessibility Excellence Advocate, Education and Employment
200 East Wells Street, Baltimore, MD 21230
410-659-9314, extension 2239| chiser at nfb.org<mailto:chiser at nfb.org>


[National Federation of the Blind]<https://nfb.org/>

                         [Facebook] <http://www.facebook.com/nationalfederationoftheblind>     [Twitter] <https://twitter.com/NFB_Voice>     [Youtube] <https://www.youtube.com/NationsBlind>

The National Federation of the Blind is a community of members and friends who believe in the hopes and dr eams of the nation's blind. Every day we work together to help blind people live the lives they want.


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://nfbnet.org/pipermail/nfbcs_nfbnet.org/attachments/20260327/98dd00b3/attachment.htm>