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Comment by gus_massa | Hacker News Reader

A long time ago, I was a math T.A. in the university and the main T.A. of my course was blind. He used a screen reader for everything, and wrote LaTeX and had a paper versions of the courser exercises in Braile+LaTeX (IIRC).

> a PDF alternative for the blind

I'm not sure what it means. It's a PDF reader? It's another format that is similar PDF but more screen reader friendly?

> Google Maps/navigation for the blind in my city

Do you know https://www.openstreetmap.org/ The data is open, so it may be useful to build an easier to use client, so you don't have to collect all the info.

> I am concerned about parasitic big corporations taking the code and putting it behind a paywall

Probably AGPL is better for your intentions.

> Not only would I be inviting disorganized, poorly constructed code,

There is no obligation as a maintainer to merge all PR. But remember to be nice.

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>I'm not sure what it means. It's a PDF reader? It's another format that is similar PDF but more screen reader friendly?

Yes, a PDF alternative optimized for screen readers. For some reason, PDFs have clunky functionality when it comes to working with my screen reader. PDF URLs are especially egregious—VoiceOver really struggles to read them. So, I started writing a new file format that allows screen reader compatibility from the start.

>The data is open, so it may be useful to build an easier to use client, so you don't have to collect all the info.

Yes, I know that website—I’ll use it if I need it. So far, I’ve been preoccupied with some other data that neither Open Maps nor Google provides. I’m about 30–35% done. I also have to think about whether to go open or closed source before using their data. Even though what they provide is mostly public domain, nonetheless, I want to stick to my own principles: credit/donate where it’s due, or go without.

>There is no obligation as a maintainer to merge all PR. But remember to be nice.

Good advice.

> I’ve been preoccupied with some other data that neither Open Maps nor Google provides.

As an avid OpenStreetMapper I honestly wonder what kind of data is missing in OpenStreetMap. Is that something sighted persons cannot grasp and thus not add to OSM? Have you seen https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_for_the_blind ? Is something missing there?

> I also have to think about whether to go open or closed source before using their data.

No, you don’t. If you use the map data, you have to attribute it, but your code doesn’t need to be open. See https://osmfoundation.org/wiki/Licence/Attribution_Guideline... for the guidelines on attribution.

>As an avid OpenStreetMapper I honestly wonder what kind of data is missing in OpenStreetMap. Is that something sighted persons cannot grasp and thus not add to OSM? Have you seen.

Thank you for providing that link — it was helpful. The information I want to display is text-based rather than graphic-based. My plan is to have two systems working in tandem: physical hardware placed in areas of interest like bus stops, intersections, etc., and a user interface that queries this data. The UI will be entirely text-based, with an absolute minimum of graphics.

In the future, if this project succeeds, I aim to launch my own GPS satellite to bypass Google’s predatory API calls.

Yes — but in Phase 1, the map will be text-only to ensure accessibility. What I envision is a sort of Wikipedia for my entire city, where every landmark and point of interest is cataloged and annotated in a rolling fashion, allowing others to edit, expand, and improve. Kind of like Google Reviews — except not owned by an advertising company.

> I aim to launch my own GPS satellite to bypass Google’s predatory API calls.

That might be a bit more costly than calling any API :) And launching own GPS satellites has no connection with Google's API as far as I know.

Are you interested in location data only? Then you can actually query https://nominatim.org/, which does the (reverese) geocoding.

> the map will be text-only to ensure accessibility.

I wonder how that's done, something like https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Mapscii ?

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