The Sound of North: Wayfinding for Visually Impaired People
by Mark Denton on October 20th, 2008
The UK site Design Week has a short article about the ongoing work of Royal College of Art research associate David Sweeney in the area of wayfinding for the visually impaired. Sweeney’s presentation to an audience at the RCA, titled The Sound of North: Wayfinding for Visually Impaired People, has been mentioned in several places in recent days, but this article is the most thorough that I have seen.
Sweeney is making use of an interesting combination of technologies that, for the most part anyway, already exist.
He tested out three pilot ideas at the Vassall Centre, driven by existing technologies: a talking, tactile map of the location; a hand-held torch using radio frequency identification technology used by swipe cards that speaks the name of your environment when cued by sensor tags en route; and a smart camera that is pinned to the front of your body to see tags with quick-response codes along the route.
One thing that sounds very interesting about this project is its apparent attempt to not just do the bare minimum to get visually impaired to their destination, but to actually create an experience that is as rewarding (and in some ways more rewarding) than that of fully sighted individuals.
The Pathfinder is an attempt to incorporate all wayfinding functions in one device. Being hand-held, it gives more personal control over your journey, says Sweeney, responding by sound, vibration or whatever alert you choose to pre-selected tags or prompts along your chosen route. You might find a WC, a gallery, a park or whatever that you hadn’t expected and break your journey as a sighted person might.
Among other features, Sweeney envisages a ‘Wikinav’, alerting you to interesting places or features or giving a bit of historical data. There could even be a tie-in with Google, he foresees.
The purpose of the RCA presentation was to expose these ideas to potential technology partners and institutional users, so it will be interesting to see if Sweeney is able to move the project forward. There is already some indication that the Victoria & Albert Museum may be interested in a possible trial, which would actually focus on using the technology to deliver exhibit information, rather than functioning primarily as a wayfinding tool for the visually impaired.