Spotted on Twtter, Talking lamp-posts will help blind people find their way.
IF YOU heard a lamp-post talking, you might think you were going mad. But speaking signs have been springing up to help blind and partially-sighted people. Newcastle is one of the first places in the UK to pilot the RNIB React Talking Sign System, which aims to help visually impaired folk get around. Speaker units can be fixed to lamp-posts on popular routes and are triggered by an electronic fob which users carry. When the speaker is activated, it tells the user where they are and what is around them, helping them decide where to go next. And it talks in a North East accent.
This seems like a reasonable idea at first blush. But I think that building special lamp posts (or lamp-post add-on boxes) and installing them everywhere may be an inefficient way to give blind folks an automatic audible description of their location.
There are several GPS devices designed to guide the blind right now. They can give turn-by-turn pedestrian directions from point A to point B, just like the one in your car does. Of course, these devices do not offer descriptions of your whereabouts. All they can do is tell you where you are and how to get to where you would like to go. Or is it?
They can build the ‘guides’ into the GPS devices. The new driving GPS devices allow users to import audio guides that are triggered as you near a location with a description. Why not add these to the pedestrian GPS devices?
It could be a grass roots effort, like a Wikipedie-esque WikiAudioEyesGuide. The GPS device could download audio clips for he local area (created by regular people) that would be triggered when the GPS device nears particular GPS coordinates. This way there is not extensive expense changing lampposts. Also, information can be updated regularly.
First person to register www.WikiAudioEyesGuide.org and start the fun wins!
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very cool Tim…if i remember rightly there were talking ad campaigns within bus shelters for a while, a few years back, my favourite was the tweeting birds. i wonder if the technology could be tweaked for talking lamp posts.