Comment by pvaldes | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pvaldes | Hacker News Reader

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Blind people could benefit of carrying one or several ultrasonic sensor like those used on cars to park. That would emit soft bleeps, faster when something is on the way or closer to an obstacle.

Can be built easily with an Arduino

I think that another possibility could be to fill your home or workplace with those devices put on walls or furniture. The idea would be that your table could say to you "lookout, I'm here" when you are about to crash against it. Use it first in the areas that were more problematic. The volume of the bleeps should be reduced to a low comfortable whispering level so they don't annoy the user. I wonder why nobody has created still a kitt providing a soundscape for blind people. That product should have a different click sound for each object marked in the soundscape.

Another possibility would be a snapshot soundscape, where a remote control could turn on/off the system only when necessary providing the blind people with a mental picture hearing all the blips at the same time and its position respect to the other blips. Like a cane, but covering much more distance

Hum, that last idea deserve more time

I want to propose this system. Imagine that you are on a workplace where blind people came often to work or as clients. There is a soft, low, slow and sparse music that is pleasing to hear as a background for anybody and is always changing.

Now lets imagine that this music is codified and played on a 3D system.

Every time we hear a piano note it means "door here", all bass notes mean "danger/stairs" and a flute means for example "WC". That would be awesome for blind people navigating new places without interrupting other workers asking for directions. Each one of this signals would be played on intervals of one minute or more, never less, so most of the time you have either silence or pleasant sounds that don't bother other people and the notes played by a particular instrument are changed each time for the same reason.

If we need more information, we could add short cords from popular music to convey additional words. For example a <garage door> could play on piano the four note sequence "here on my car" from Gary Numan, or iterate over a list of similar parts of very popular songs with the word "car" on it to not be too repetitive.

Of course it just could also just say "garage door" when a modified white cane approach like on elevators, but that could be distracting for non blind workers.

Muzak but specifically for blind people!

Such an engineer's solution. :P

The glaring issue here would be standardization. Either every place uses the same sounds, or you have to learn a new system for each place you visit using this sort of thing. This is also why you couldn't change notes regularly, which would be boring and repetitive for everyone else.

The same instruments should be used for the same things everywhere. Yep. This is the idea.

Or at least to navigate a complex multistore building with a lot of repeated elements. I wonder if a videogame could be designed as a soundgame for blind people replacing images by sounds.

I'd be curious to hear why you and GP think technical solutions like this don't currently exist. Nobody thought of it? Cost? Effectiveness?

Instead of the sound clues triggering every minute, it may trigger on arrival of the person wearing RF ID or phone.

Unless there is a lot of blind workers in the room, much better, yep.

Blind people at least should have a way to be able to evacuate a building with sound clues instead the traditional lights that turn up if there is a fire and are useless for them. The emergency lights are mandatory by law, but including emergency blips could be also useful for everybody in some areas where a lot of blind people are expected (or live).

Blind people should be given the opportunity to evacuate a building or a school just by their own means, even if is alone or left behind in a emergency. You can't always rely on touching to orientate yourself if there is a fire. Specially metallic things.

Where do you live that the fire alarm doesn’t have any sound?

Could you find the exit currently following that sound?

Can those alarms redirect you on real time to a secondary route to escape if the main is burning or blocked?

Oh I see what you are saying. My bad

Systems like that have existed for decades in various versions. The only blind people who use them are people who went blind as an adult - and then often only the investor. People who went blind young have learned to deal with the world and discover technology like that is more annoying than helpful.

Dogs and canes work very well and solve most of the problem. It doesn't really matter if they are walking into a wall, piano or door - they need to know to avoid it. If you want useful sounds require every traffic light to have beeps when it is safe to cross loud enough to be heard across the street - because that is a real problem blind people have in navigating. Most of the rest of the world is forgiving to the types of mistakes blind people make and so they don't really need help.

The other way you can help the blind is just be willing to give directions from the sidewalk in front of a building to the front door.

Blind people don't have a big problem with bumping into furniture in their own home, much the same way you don't wipe out when walking from your bed to the bathroom in the dark. And instead of you getting 30 seconds of practice every other night, they navigate that way all the time.

Also, a bunch of noise playing whenever you walk through your house sounds like a huge bother.

Is the refrigerator door open or closed? What about the drawers? Is the vacuum in the middle of the path?

Blind people don't need to know this things, of course. Don't need anybody, and can navigate everything like champs. On the other way, would really do harm to be able to know this on advance?.

The reason this isn't a product that people use is because it sucks. Not because you were the first guy to think about the poor blind people.

Can confirm, I do this all the time lol. The crashing into furneture thing hah. I think it's too much fun! Also, I wouldn't want too much sound around me. I'm already aversive to overly loud, overly changing sounds. They tend to set off my migraines.

These products exists since the 80s. I have never seen one that is actually practical in real life. The elevator-pitch always sounds nice, to sighted people at least..

Please don't fall for this patronising attitude that just because you are a tech person, you can invent all sorts of helpful gadgets.

Educate yourself about the disability before giving advice or your great $0.02 ideas. They are always ment in a good way, but tiring for those who are in the know.

Ok

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