A 3D audio system developed by a team of Microsoft engineers and designers led by visually impaired engineer Amos Miller could make a huge difference in helping give visually impaired people greater confidence to move beyond their homes and neighborhoods.
The blind navigation device was reported in a BBC report but there’s a deeper dive of the process to develop the technology on Microsoft’s website. It walks readers through the creative process with a multimedia presentation that makes keen use of sound to remind readers to keep the technology’s target audience front of mind.
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The headset works with a Windows smartphone and communicates with a set of Bluetooth-enabled beacons strapped indoors and outdoors to poles and lamp posts deployed around a town. Users wear the headset, which transmits sound and verbal directions. The beacons send information to the headset. It alerts users to obstacles with beeps and names landmarks and streets as they approach them. So far it has been tested in Reading in England.
It is part of a collaboration with Guide Dogs UK and design institute Future Cities Catapult.
The engineers and designers from Microsoft who supported the development of the prototype spent a lot of time building an understanding of the challenges of traveling with vision loss. Over the past three years they have collaborated with mobility experts and users from Guide Dogs in the field. They experimented with different approaches to hardware and software, and provided feedback to shape the technology, according to a description of the headset system’s development on Microsoft’s website.
Jenny Cook, head of strategy and research for Guide Dogs said in the report: “The possibility of what this could be was exciting and still is. We’ve only done a concept, it’s still pure research and development, but the possibilities are endless and the impact is incredible if we get this right.”
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The report raises awareness on issues I hadn’t considered such as the 65 percent unemployment rate across the blind population in the US and UK. Or the amount of time it can take for visually impaired people to learn a route so they know which obstacles, and cope with a changing landscape that could include building construction or street repairs. There’s no doubt that the cost of outfitting a small city or town with this technology would be huge. But the potential to increase in quality of life for visually impaired people would be enormous.
Sure it’s a powerful marketing story for Microsoft and a great pitch for its Windows smartphone, which struggles with a tiny percent of Apple and Samsung’s marketshare. But it also offers a great example of a several different groups collaborating to better understand the challenges a particular patient population faces and approach it from the user’s perspective.
