University Student Creates Jacket with Sensors for the Blind | Hacker News Reader

University Student Creates Jacket with Sensors for the Blind

ntv.co.ug

12 pointspueblito7 comments

I've been seeing students develop prototypes like these with arduinos and ultrasonic sensors for decades now, but does anyone know of tech like this that's in widespread production or actually used by the visually impaired?

I am blind. I know sensor-thingies since the early 90s. I have to admit, whenever I tried one, it was kind of fun to play with, but eventually turned out to be useless in practice. The problem always boils down to the bandwidth you have for getting input from the sensors. Those based on vibrations have a very limited bandwidth, and those which auralize your environment tend to impede your actual hearing, which is more contraproductive then you might expect.

In general, there is this phenomenon that tech-people, when confronted with the problems of the blind, tend to think there should be simple and cheap solutions. The truth is, there seldomly are any. Whenever someone tried to find a better way to build braille displays then piezzo electrics, they built something with subpar performance or low durability/lifetime. Even when just recently a EU-funded project tries to built an indoor navigation system, they found out during the evaluation phase that what they have produced is not practically useful.

There is cool assistive technology, dont get me wrong. But the barrier to producing something which is useful in real life is higher then most student-project creators might think.

I wonder if the problem is that many of these products are built by people who are not blind, and so they are not dogfooding the product as they develop it. It’s very easy to imagine a hypothetical user happily using your invention if you’re not frequently facing its actual limitations while you build it.

Yes, thats part of the issue. I was interviewed once by an university student who was working on a navigation system for blind pedestrians. The idea is great, of course, but it was obvious after a while that primary mtoivation to work on this was to make progress in her academic career, i.e. get a grade for the project. "Having" to work with potential end-users was part of the story, but not priority :-)

Also, imagine how the dynamics of such a project works. There is the initial idea, paired with a lot of enthusiasm. Suppose thats all, but the idea itself is not practical, at least not with the planned approach. Now, this team finds/hires a "consultant" who is blind. In reality, they will enthusiastically tell you about their idea, and almost always assume you are going to get them feedback without expecting any compensation for your work, because ', you know, having a self-interest in such a project must be enough for the blind man to be happy... That aside, what is their "consultant" going to tell them. Are they going to be straight upfront and say "that is sweet, but totally inpractical", or are they going to tone their analysis down a bit, because they dont want to see these nicely-motivated people fail? Also, if the "consultant" treally tells 'em its a bonkers idea, are they going to believe it, or are they perhaps more convinced of their initial plan still? These are things that are going to happen / already happened in the past...

Thank you for your response! What you said makes a lot of sense, and confirms what I suspected - that at the end of the day these might not be that useful to those who actually are meant to use them.

Also blind here, and a computer science student. Biggest problem is the funding, at least from my perspective. Assistive technology is very expensive, and producing it still is extremely complicated.

Pretty much you have to wait for companies like Apple to make things relatively cheap and widely available. For instance, the newest top of the line braille note device is still significantly more expensive than buying the latest iPhone 14 Pro, with a braille display.

If you live in a rich country, the government will pay for it. But those of us from a poor country, cannot really afford it.

@dang co.ug is a second level domain - it should be treated as a special website suffix by HN, like co.uk or github.io, so this story is considered as coming from ntv.co.ug, not just co.ug

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