Accessibility for all is a hallmark of great public spaces, but making spaces accessible for the visually impaired often poses significant challenges. Indoor positioning systems (IPS) can help.

One in five people globally suffers from some form of visual disability, ranging in type and severity. In Sweden, for instance, there are 120,000 visually impaired citizens, 15%of whom suffer from grave visual impairment, meaning they can’t read a newspaper or navigate independently in public spaces.

Many nations have mandates in place that provide accommodations for individuals with disabilities. For the visually impaired, some public indoor spaces, such as public transit systems, provide tactile markers that help the visually impaired set course. Contrasting colors on signage are helpful for the partially blind. Tactile maps are available in many public transit spaces, and signage typically includes information written in Braille. It’s interesting to note, however, that  fewer than 10% of the 1.3 million legally blind people in the United States read Braille, according to information gathered by the National Federation of the Blind. In some areas, audio signage reads information aloud. These are good tools, but they don’t address every situation for a visually impaired person:

• How do I know where the tactile markers are taking me?
• How do I find my way to the tactile map and once I do, how am I supposed to find the relevant information and remember the entire route I need to take?
• How do I find my way to devices that provide audio instructions?
• How can I get that information repeated once I’ve moved away from the device?
• How can I independently reach my destination without an escort?
• How can I know what’s around me in order to tell my friend where to meet up?

Shouldn’t there be a digital solution for all of this, ubiquitous and with dynamic content? Enter the smart phone. These devices are increasingly better equipped at serving accessibility needs, and innovators are ideating solutions stemming from these platforms. For example, Microsoft is researching how to create a “soundscape” for the visually impaired, virtually showing what he or she faces. And Apple’s iPhone’s voiceover and text-to-speech allows for an audio reading of a phone’s screen content and to navigate the screen.

Because mobile apps can leverage GPS technology, they can guide a blind person to the nearest café or other desired location. BlindSquare, an iOS application, does just that by providing the user with the distance and orientation of the points of interest, using open source databases for points of interest and street map information.

However, GPS has one huge disadvantage; it doesn’t work near and inside buildings. This is where Indoor Positioning Systems technology comes into play.

Public spaces equipped with IPS allows for unprecedented experiences for the visually impaired. IPS are similar to GPS, but whereas GPS relies on satellites for positioning data, IPS relies instead on Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, as well as the smartphone’s internal motion sensors. This results in an indoor position accuracy even better than that of GPS, which is beneficial for guiding someone – particularly someone with visual disabilities.

IPS provides the user with a latitude/longitude and floor number, and can indicate the distance, number of intermediary floors, direction and route options to a Point-of-Interest (POI). IPS can provide information about which POI is nearest to the current location or even which café is closest, and give step-by-step directions to that café.

IPS can effectively interact with existing tactile solutions, creating synergies that increase the experience for the visually impaired. The tactile markers will make more sense if the person walking by them hears where they are leading. Similarly, the maps will make more sense if one can bring them in the mobile phone and ask for a destination or category of destinations wherever one happens to be.

Technically, IPS is easy to grasp. Experience wise, it is transformational. Business wise, it is a clever investment. There is no doubt that indoor positioning will grow into something we encounter every day. Why not start with those who are best off using it?

Anton Tyrberg

Channel Marketing Manager at SenionLab