In 1994, Mike May garnered attention in the blindness community and beyond with his laptop in a backpack that could tell him the roads and turns to take from, say, the Minneapolis airport to a desired hotel. That product was called Strider, and, dazzling as it was, skeptics wondered aloud if it would ever become something more than a prototype for the benefit of Mike May and maybe a few others. May was a man with a mission, though, and he could see clearly the benefit of wayfinding technology for people who are blind or have low vision. Today, most people who are visually impaired who use technology either own or are familiar with the concept of GPS (global positioning system) devices—and, indeed, many sighted people have these electronic homing pigeons on the dashboards of their cars. Through his company, Sendero Group, May has seen GPS devices for blind people shrink from the laptop in a backpack to HumanWare BrailleNote Classic to the smaller BrailleNote PK and now, with the company's newest collaborative effort with Code Factory, to the still-smaller Mobile Geo.
A professed lover of the BrailleNote PK himself, May said that his company recognized that the Sendero GPS product needed to grow, to offer blind people more choices. A software development kit was the next item on the agenda, rendering the Sendero GPS software an available platform for integrating into other products.
Beyond HumanWare's BrailleNote family of products, the next expansion was a collaboration with GW Micro, making GPS an option on the company's Braille Sense line of products. But the "holy grail," May said, was to go the way of the mainstream market, getting the software onto a handheld device.
Sendero GPS is a Windows-based product. Although the company sells and promotes both TALKS and Mobile Speak screen-reading programs for cell phones and PDAs (personal digital assistants), only Mobile Speak runs on both Symbian and Windows platforms. Thus, a dialogue with Code Factory of Spain, manufacturer of Mobile Speak, was begun.
After just one visit by Sendero staff to Code Factory's headquarters, it was clear that the two companies would work well together. It was a pleasure, May said, to work with a company that was so nimble and whose culture was so similar to that of the Sendero Group. "Once they finally put the project on the drawing board," May said, "things happened very quickly."
Today, Sendero's GPS, running with Code Factory's Mobile Speak, can run on some 300 Smartphones and PDAs, available through U.S. phone service providers AT&T, Nextel, Sprint, and Verizon. A phone or PDA is a personal device, May explained, requiring that a customer hold it and explore the buttons. Thus, customers purchase the handheld device of choice and then, from Sendero or Code Factory, purchase Mobile Geo to run on that phone or PDA.
The challenge in running the Sendero GPS on a handset was primarily the limitations of a smaller keypad and, of course, the availability of voice-only, rather than voice and braille information, as with the BrailleNote products. "If you want to find the nearest Starbucks," May offered as an example, "you press the letter 'f' plus space bar on the BrailleNote, enter the text string for Starbucks, and press Enter. That's 10 keystrokes. On a phone's keypad, it could be 44."
Part of the solution to circumvent this lack of convenience is shortcuts. Every number from 0-9 on the phone keypad is a Sendero GPS shortcut. An additional advantage offered by a cell phone is the ability to vibrate. Thus, a variety of vibration patterns provide quick alert information to the user.
Knowing that many people who are blind are already familiar with the Morse code (because of the popularity of ham radios among them), it made sense to attach this system to the available vibrations to provide alerts. The combination of long and short signals to spell "CI" to alert the user to a new city, "T" for an upcoming turn, and so on renders the handset version more efficient and user-friendly. Pressing a single key on the keypad to find out the nearest intersection or turn is another work-around for the smaller keypad's limitations.
Which Way to Go with GPS Products?
Any product that runs the Sendero GPS software—a BrailleNote mPower, BrailleNote PK, Braille Sense, or any one of the 300 products on the market that is capable of running Mobile Geo—will have the same features. You can map a route to your next destination or just find out where you are currently exploring. You can stay indoors before you venture into the larger world and use the software to look around and find potential roads or points of interest. You can check distances or find out how fast you are walking or riding in a vehicle. The advantages, according to May, are mostly a matter of personal preference.
A blind person who prefers products with voice output will probably enjoy having his or her GPS software on a handset, whereas a person who prefers reading information in braille will be happier with a BrailleNote PK or Braille Sense. May said that he has three devices with him most of the time—a cell phone with Mobile Geo, another cell phone (Nokia N82) with the knfbReader software and Wayfinder Access, and a BrailleNote PK.
The "holy grail" now would be one handheld device to perform all the technological functions that are available to blind people on the go. Toward that end, May said that he looks forward to a time when the knfbReader software can run on a Windows-based phone or, conversely, when the Sendero GPS can run on a Symbian phone.
Meanwhile, the company that believes that "It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive" is constantly exploring opportunities for improving the tools that already exist.
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