This paper presents the American Council of the Blind's views on way finding. A brief, overview section on areas of concern in non-visual travel in the last two decades is followed by a discussion of our view that such research has tended to leave blind and low-vision people out of the loop. The paper concludes with our call for the creation of a core group to both advance the cause of non-visual wayfinding, through basic and applied research as needed, and to include blind and low-vision travelers as primary, prominent members of that recommended core group.
Beginning in the mid-1980's, topics in the area of non-visual and low-vision travel that have been talked about within the so-called "blindness community" include detectable warnings; tactile and enlarged, high-contrast signage, and what have come to be called accessible pedestrian signals (APS), formerly known as audible pedestrian signals. The notable thing about all these travel-related topics is that, in general, most issues within these categories involve being warned about travel path hazards: subway platform edges marked with detectable warnings of one possible kind or another; non-visually discernible pedestrian signal systems that indicate when it may be safe to proceed in a particular direction through a traffic-controlled intersection, and even high visual contrast, enlarged-print signage to aid in rapid emergency exit identification by low-vision travelers facing an imminent emergency, requiring rapid building egress. Thus, most of these travel topics do not involve answering a blind traveler's most all-important, basic question--particularly when traversing an unfamiliar environment for the very first time: "Where am I!" Even tactile and print-enlarged, high-contrast signage, where it exists at all, is primarily used indoors, thus making these, where-indicated, if you will, travel tools most useful only after one has arrived successfully at a desired travel destination by other way finding means.
The American Council of the blind, therefore, welcomes concerted research efforts on establishing the independent, non-visual apprehension of a blind or low-vision traveler's location at any time and at any point along a travel route where such information either is unclear, becomes unclear, or needs to be confirmed to accrue to the increased self-assurance of such travelers--particularly when executing unfamiliar routes, in busy and congested urban environments.
It is this writer's impressionistic, personal judgment that, if asked, most blind and low-vision travelers, if actually asked about way finding, would immediately and adamantly express the strongly held conviction that either not much way finding research has been done; or that the research which has been done has not involved large cross-sections of the non-visual and low-vision travel community, or that the current way finding tools being developed are either too prohibitively expensive, too technologically complex or just plain too difficult to examine and try out for the average, run-of-the-mill, common blind and low-vision man or woman to even be meaningfully involved in a wayfinding discussion: in a word, apathy is the first response to way finding throughout much of the blindness community.
A single, albeit, perhaps, slightly off-topic, real-world example should suffice to demonstrate such apathy. At the most recent state convention of the Washington Council of the Blind, a young recent graduate of the Washington State School for the Blind brought to the convention an actual working example of a low-cost, electronic travel aid, purchased at his own personal expense from a foreign country. The young man made it known, both at the pre-convention, evening board meeting and again on the general convention floor, that he was willing to meet with anyone at the convention and give them a demonstration of the device for as long as they liked. He made it firmly and repeatedly clear that he was not a vendor, he just had obtained the device from abroad for his own personal technological interest and curiosity. No more than a small handful of people actually took advantage of this amazing, generous personal offer to see hard-to-obtain assistive travel technology up close and personal for as long as each individually curious person might like. The young man unhurriedly spent well in excess of 30 minutes letting me put his object detection and relative distance-indication technology through its paces in various indoor environments using various variable device settings, until I had experienced my fill of analyzing the device's utility.
Somehow, blind people have simply gotten used to being out of the assistive travel technology loop. While this example does not, strictly speaking, involve a way-finding device that can tell me what street I am currently walking along, presently approaching, or which direction Fifth Avenue is from my current travel position, the above example is revealing for its symptomatic suggestion that blind and low-vision people have simply gotten used to just not being where the action is in the travel topic arena!
Way finding research, whether in the form of global positioning satellite receivers (GPS receivers) or less exotic methods that explore ways of locating and converting existing outdoor signage information sources into non-visually apprehendible formats, such as spoken signage, are currently of little practical value to the average blind and low-vision traveler. First, this is true because there exists no popularizing conduit, if you will, to take the impenetrable--albeit highly detailed and accurate--research prose found in periodicals such as the Journal of Visual Impairment and Blindness and other academic and professional research literature distribution sources and convey that self-same information in plain English to average people. A travel tool that is the greatest advance since Richard E. Hoover's development of World-War-II-era long-cane technique might first come to light and then just die on the vine, if distribution methods to get knowledge of and hands-on experience with the new wonder tool out to the vast bulk of people within the blindness community were not extant.
Second, a great conceptual or theoretical idea might, itself, die on the vine, if it is not cross-fertilized by the common blind and low-vision citizenry, insisting--as they rightfully should--that such a tool should be simplified (where no appreciable loss of utility can be maintained), miniaturized to make it more easily and effortlessly carried about, and produced in production models that seek the lowest possible price (with no appreciable loss of quality) through the judicious combination of taking advantage of off-the-shelf, commercially available components, as well as what use of economies-of-scale techniques as can be efficaciously applied. An example of this last in a somewhat unrelated area might be the first Sharp talking calculator that brought the price of such talking calculators down from a minimum of several hundreds of dollars or more to a $50 model, while retaining remarkable calculating power. This was done by means of a single, large production run of thousands upon thousands of units produced. While the run was never repeated, it dramatically changed the face--and the price--of non-visually accessible calculators for the blind. However, it must be further emphasized--and it can not be either too often or too strongly emphasized--that the attendant, serendipitous benefit of an ever-widening, concentrically increasing user pool from the initial ripple made by the first basic research eddy to be dropped into the information distribution pond is that the feedback loop between principal investigators and ever-increasing numbers of product users makes a better product with greater net, collective improvements being suggested than could be had by a small number of individuals working on the same idea in isolation. It is somewhat analogous to the modern-day practice of simply having the general public, in effect, beta test a company's new software: bugs and glitches get discovered and fixed faster than in the lab, though many end users despair of being forced to be a personal time-wasting part of this rapid, modern-day mass improvement scheme.
The American Council of the Blind issues a clarion call for the composition of a nationwide core group of academic researchers in the way finding field, in tandem with representation from both orientation and mobility specialists, as well as independent low-vision, long-cane and dog-guide travelers--so-called travel assistive technology consumers--to make combined, concerted efforts toward establishing practical lines of way finding research, providing nationwide testing opportunities to duplicate and verify that research within the largest blindness and low-vision population possible, and to diffuse relevant and useful results of such basic and applied way finding research to the entire, interested blindness community.
Further, the American Council of the Blind stands ready to be a willing distribution and dissemination vehicle for the creation and diffusion of such research and its resultant consumer feedback. Just as a tree falling in the forest with no one present to hear its sound can be philosophically said to have made no sound, at all, likewise, genuinely useful contributions to good way finding research have in the past, can in the present and will continue in the future to suffer the same sad fate: being great ideas about which no one has heard.