Joann Becker was tired of missing the bus.
“When I am walking down the street, I never can find bus stops,” Becker said. “I use GPS on my iPhone. And inevitably, where I think a bus stop is, it isn’t. So the bus passes right by.”
If you rely on public transportation, catching the bus can be a pain. But if you’re blind, it comes with a whole other set of challenges—finding the actual bus stop, for one. So the blind community took matters into its own hands and came up with a fix.
Becker, a specialist in assistive technology at the Perkins School for the Blind, teamed up with the Perkins Solutions team, local software developer Raizlabs, and the MBTA. And with a little money from Google, they made BlindWays, a smartphone app that enables blind people to find a bus stop on their own.
“GPS is not accurate enough,” Becker said. “So micro-navigation is really what we’re trying to resolve in this app.”
Unlike BlindSquare and Seeing Eye—well-known GPS apps for the blind—Becker says Blindways is the first app that can zero in on a 30-foot radius, narrowing the difference between getting on the bus and standing at the wrong corner as it whizzes by.
“It gives me three of the closest bus stops,” Becker said. “So I can choose which one I’m the closest to, and then when I swipe, I just double tap my phone, and then I listen for the clues.”
Those clues are submitted by the public. Users submit easily recognizable landmarks that are close to the bus stop, like a garbage can, a bench or, as Siri’s voice calls out, a metal pole: “Before the stop, there is a metal pole.”
“So, I’m going to look for the metal pole,” she said, moving forward. She taps her cane against the pole.
Siri zeroes in: “The bus stop is on a metal pole”
“I have arrived!” Becker announced with a chuckle.
BlindWays relies on real-time, crowd-sourced information, very much like the Waze driving app. But Waze users are noting road hazards and hidden police cars because they’ll benefit when others do the same. That could be a problem for BlindWays, according to Carl Richardson.
“I think Perkins did a good job but I think they missed an opportunity to have this app used universally by not just blind people but people of any ability,” he said.
Richardson is deaf and blind. His guide dog is a black lab named Merrick, and there are at least a dozen assistive technology apps on his iPhone. Richardson, who is also an American with Disabilities Act coordinator for the state, says Becker and Perkins Solutions should have made an app that appeals more to the mainstream.
“How many people who are not blind are going to download an app that says it’s designed for blind people?” Richardson asked. “I might have called it something like—maybe the names were already taken, but I might have called it something like ‘Bus Stop Finder.’ You know, who doesn’t want to be able to find the bus stop?”
The people at Perkins Solutions, of course, are optimistic that sighted people will take the time to drop in clues. Maybe our Yankee sensibilities have a hard time believing that people will do this purely out of altruism, but Perkins Solutions says volunteers have contributed enough information to pinpoint close to 1,200 of the 8,000 bus stops in the MBTA system. And the app has been running for just a few weeks. In the meantime, Becker makes this pitch.
“It’s all about empowerment," she said. "We want people to be able to get to their jobs, school, appointments, and as independently as possible.”
