Return to the index pageAn entire cultural, governmental, and institutional infrastructure evolved to address the problem of communications accessibility for the blind learner. This is understandable because access to information is a right in a democratic country. There evolved a complex infrastructure to provide information for the sighted population. It had only to be adapted for the blind. There is no comparable cultural mandate for blind navigation. The sighted population can use vision to get safely across streets, through a grocery store, to and from school, etc. Whereas the problem of information access in the culture is common to both sighted and blind persons, the problem of mobility is not.
Technology created reading machines, talking books, and computers that translate Braille. More and more smart machines have expressive and receptive speech. These devices become smaller and less expensive with each passing year. There is not a comparable set of breakthroughs with navigational technologies. Communications technologies were easier to invent and consequently were brought to market. Navigational technologies are complex and are not yet small enough or inexpensive enough for the mass market. Technologies available for blind navigation are insufficiently developed, adapted, and marketed.
It can be said that while todays communications technology is available to enable blind persons to participate in school, on the job, and in leisure activities on a par with sighted peers, we can point to no comparable progress in the area of blind navigation. There is less history of coordinated effort to address blind navigation, and less governmental and institutional support to confront this challenge. There is no Federal Navigational Support Center comparable to the Federally funded American Printing House for the Blind. Furthermore, whereas extensive funding is available for the purchase of communications tools, very little funding is available for the purchase of the few and expensive navigational aids coming to market.
No one needs to be convinced that we are living in a revolutionary time. This is the age of technology. The power and capacity of computers doubles every eighteen months. For blind travelers this means that there are new tools, improved tools, and new hope coming in waves year after year, like never before in history.
It is ironic that just as this computer revolution went into overdrive, the one institution in the world that focused on blind navigational technology, the Blind Mobility Research Unit at Nottingham University In England, closed it doors for lack of funding. Many ground breaking technologies came out of Nottingham research, including the Sonic Pathfinder. The closing of the Mobility Research Unit at Nottingham left the entire planet without leadership, just as blind rehabilitation professions and blind consumers faced an onslaught of promising technologies and research.
Even if Nottingham's program had not failed, the flood of emerging technologies would have required the creation of new institutions to address the waves of possibilities emerging from the research labs and technology companies. At this critical juncture in history, there is no organized way to fund research or to purchase and service navigational technologies, no way to blend (and bend) technologies for the benefit of blind travelers. There is no product champion, no structure for rallying the troops, for marketing the tools, articulating the need, and refining and updating the technologies. There is no global, focused leadership.
It is also ironic that the inventors and champions of many of the foundational electronic navigation tools, are now retired. The inventors of KASPA, the Sonic Pathsounder, and the signage infrared system for example, are all well into retirement. There is no institution dedicated to the preservation of their work, and more significantly, there is no organization dedicated to changing these inventions as technologies improve. Just as we are about to be blessed with smaller, smarter, cheaper components to make these foundational inventions affortable, practical and acceptable to the blind consumer, just when the promise is about to be fulfilled, the ball is about to be dropped for lack of an institutional champion.
To understand why old institutions are failing, and to provide clues to the structure and operation of new organizations, we must examine the reason for the changes and the trends that are causing all the fuss in our world today.
Dr. Raymond Kurzweil, the inventor of the Kurzweil Reading machine for the blind, and author of the book “The Age of Intelligent Machines” describes our era as a second industrial revolution. The first industrial revolution replaced human muscle power, physical strength, with machine power. Manual labor was replaced by machine labor. Dr. Kurzweil tells us that now we are in the age when human intellectual labor is being supplemented or replaced by machine intelligence. This is the age of the smart machine. Indeed, this is the age of smart stuff, smart clothes, smart spaces, smart toasters, smart desktops. We are only at the very beginning of this new industrial revolution. The impact on blind navigation is yet to unfold, but the promise is great.
The promise of smart machines rides on a theory called Moore's Law. Gordon Moore, the co-founder of computer chip maker Intel Corporation, made the observation that the number of transistors packed on a computer chip was doubling every eighteen months. Furthermore, when you examined history, it was obvious that this doubling of capacity had been going on since computers were invented. Doubling the number of transistors on a chip means that every eighteen months computer power doubled; we could do twice as much, twice as fast, every year and a half. Moore's Law is the key defining trend of the technology age.
To understand how important Moore's law is, Dr. Kurzweil tells a story about the invention of the game of Chess in China.
The emperor of China so loved the game of Chess that he offered the inventor of the game anything he wished as a gift. The inventor asked that a grain of rice be placed on the first square of a chess board, two grains on the second square, four on the next, then eight, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, and so on until the entire chess board was covered.
There are 64 squares on a chess board. When you double the number of grains of rice thirty two times, half a chess board, you have about one acres worth of rice . . . no big deal. However, when you cross over onto the second half of the chess board, some seriously nasty business comes down. The exponential rise from square 32 to 33 is dramatic, the rise from 33 to 34 even more traumatic, and it gets worse from there. To fill the entire board with rice requires 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 grains. If a grain is counted out every second, it would take 584 billion years to count them all. The age of planet Earth is only 4.5 billion years. The story goes that the emperor lost his kingdom, or the inventor lost his head. Either way, the consequences are severe.
We have lived through thirty two doublings of computer power. We are passing from the 32nd to the 33rd square on the chess board; seriously nasty business is about to disrupt everything we hold perceptually dear. From here on out, the power of technology and the impact that this technology will have on our lives will be increasingly dramatic. According to Microsoft founder Bill Gates, in his book “The Road Ahead” we can expect at least 20 more doublings of computer power.
We have crossed a line. On the side where we stand, everything is familiar, albeit a little uneasy as we feel the impact of smart machines encroaching on our lives. But the dramactic and unfamiliar lurks just around the corner, if not with the next doubling of computer power, then with the one following. Some seriously unsettling business is afoot, at the very same time that we face potentials for doing good and solving problems like never before in the human era. This technological revolution is part of a history of change that impacts on cultures and on our perception of space and of time. The theories of futurist Alvin Toffler best explain this perspective.
Alvin Toffler speaks of waves of change. These powerful waves wash over civilizations and transform the way human beings live and act. These waves result when there is an invention of such magnitude that it overpowers old institutions and old customs. Toffler talks of three waves, but we will speak of five.
For one million years human beings survived by hunting for food; by killing animals on the hunt or by gathering plants. Much of the short human existence revolved around finding food. The age of hunting and gathering was overrun by the invention of agriculture; the domestication of plants and animals.
Each time an invention, like the domestication of plants and animals, washes over humanity, profound changes occur in the perception of time and of space. These changes in perception demand that new organizational structures evolve, and that human beings interact in new and unusual ways.
In the age of the hunter, "home" was not a permanent idea, neither was the concept of land or housing as property and wealth. The evolution of stationary communities, of towns and then cities, happened because of the invention of agriculture. These are changes in the perception of the use of space. Perceptions of time changed as well. The hunt followed the migration of the herd. In the age of agriculture, time was ruled by the seasons and the length of the day. Not only did the use of space and time change, but the speed of life accelerated, leadership shifted, old power structures were replaced by the newly empowered. Old definitions and old institutions collapsed and new ones took their place. This is the scenario that occurs as each wave of change slams into traditional cultures.
The age of agriculture lasted six thousand years. Herein lies another trend. Each significant wave of change is washing over human cultures at a faster and faster rate. The hunter gather stage lasted one million years, the agricultural age six thousand, the industrial age three hundred, the age of technology forty years (some say it is over now), the biotechnology/genetics era is looming huge on the horizon, and behind it, towering above all the others, is the age of the microelectromechanical system, the nanotechnology wave. The trend here is unnervingly obvious; the waves are washing in faster and faster.
Not only are the waves coming faster, but the pace of life in each era is also accelerating. The slow seasonal life of the farmer gave way to the frantic pace of the industrial age. In the age of technology it seems we have to run to stay in place.
The industrial age overturned the traditions and institutions of the agricultural era with a vengence. To understand the scope of the changes, it is helpful to see what happened when the industrial age overwhelmed the agricultural era. We can then use the knowledge of what happened to help us predict and understand the changes coming as we switch from the industrial era to a technology age (the age of smart machines).
What do the following concepts have in common?
“job” “nuclear family” “classroom” “publishing” “high school”
“graduation” “grade levels” “department stores (departments)”
“nine to five” “special education” “student” “textbook” “office”
“school subjects: math class, english class, etc.” “author”
These concepts are all inventions of the industrial age. They reflect new ways we think about, perceive, and act in space and through time. They are about new institutions like schools and corporations. They are about power shifts and changes in the concept of wealth and wisdom.
The agricultural age defined wealth as land and property. Little changed from generation to generation. You looked to the past as a guide to the future. Grandfather and grandmother were the sages. The family farm was the focal point of everyday life. Values revolved around the church and the family. The rhythm of life was determined by the seasons and the natural life cycle of living creatures.
Wealth in the industrial age was based on capital goods made from raw materials. Those who owned and manipulated the raw materials and their products gained power and affluence. The future was defined by the present; lessons from the past were of little use in the new age. The old extended family structure was destroyed; the nuclear family was invented.
The concept of the "job" was also invented by the industrial age. It pulled the children off the farms to the cities where they had to adjust to new spatial and temporal rules. A job required an employee to be at a certain place for a set amount of time, to do repetitive tasks, to "work" at producing things that were not immediately relevant to the individuals life. In exchange for the loss of the agricultural life style, employers gave steady wages (not affected by the weather or the natural rhythms).
The industrial age saw the creation of vacations, health insurance, and sick days; all resulting from the invention of the job (a new way to work). This change was traumatic for a farm based, agricultural culture, and many resisted. Human beings no longer were "ruled" by their natural rhythms or by the seasons. Respect for the wisdom of the elders of the society declined as their power was by passed; they no longer controlled the source of wealth, and their knowledge was irrelevant to the new age.
The rules are again changing in this age of technology. The life cycle of a business is now only seven years. The cycle in new technologies is down to six months, and in the software business, if a company is to survive, it must bring new products to market within two to three months. There is hardly time to plan; certainly the present is of little help.
The technology age looks to the future to decide what needs to be done. A hockey analogy is often used to describe this. Businesses, professions, and individuals must predict where the hockey puck is going. Making plans based on where the hockey puck is now, is a sure strategy for failure. If we don't make good predictions and act on them quickly, when we get to the future, the future won't be there. The world is changing so fast it has come down to this: we literally have to invent our future.
Wealth in the technology age is linked to knowledge. The rich and powerful of our era will be those who find ways to turn raw data (information) into usable knowledge. This generation needs creative, inventive, imaginative people. Technology is not just a collection of fun toys, a playground for nerds, it is livelihood, wealth, and well-being. Just as the concept of the "job" was an industrial age concept, there is evolving a new entity. The concept of "job" is dying as the industrial age is fading.
The age of technology brought the world an entirely new kind of space; something never before encountered. We call it cyberspace, a world where reality is virtual. Word processing works with virtual paper (the laws of the paper universe have changed). Virtual books are being created as we speak. Using virtual reality, 3-D technology over the World Wide Web, we can navigate our avatars (graphic symbols representing our virtual selves) through virtual worlds (the multimedia, 3-D "book"). These virtual worlds need not pay the slightest attention to the laws of nature. You may walk through walls, float through the air, walk in and out of time periods, or twist and shake the fabric of space and time. Cause and effect disappear if you like; the ego is reduced to a point of view. Just as we use clip art to cut and paste together our creations, we will soon have the ability to clip virtual universes and paste them together to invent our own virtual worlds.
The concept of a computer as a keyboard, monitor, and central processing box, sitting on a desk, is already a fading paradigm. Computers in the future will be invisible, built into the walls, into our clothes, furniture, and appliances within a room. They will not generate images on a tiny screen. They will provide voice feedback and/or they will generate 3-dimensional virtual objects into rooms. Images will be generated in windows or will be any size required, from match box to full wall displays. The television and the radio will be cannibalized by the computer and the central medium of the new age will be the Internet.
Another way to think about cyberrooms is as simulation spaces. They will evolve first as games. Later, education and special education will use classrooms as simulated environments. Mobility specialists will be able to expose rural blind children to subway platforms and crowded city streets. Urban blind students will travel on country paths. Blind children in the third world will have virtual reality mobility specialists visit there rooms as needed.
This is where we stand today, in the middle of a technology revolution, driven by Moore's Law. The industrial age is dying and all the institutions that supported it are undergoing change or they are dying as well. Our perception of space, time, wealth, and power are in flux. We are in the middle of having to create the future. This takes us back to the key idea expressed in the title of this section: The Need for New Institutions.
No one knows what these new organizations will look like, but we can make some educated guesses, and we can show why the old institutions are not up to the task. We know that industrial age institutions are too slow to keep up with the pace of technology. We know that they are too heavy with administration and bureaucratic tradition. We know that these old institutions are modeled after factories, and the old concepts of space (the four walls of a classroom) and time (nine to five). And we suspect that old patterns of competition and territory are obsolete in the new age.
Here is an educated guess about the structure of technology age institutions. They are first and foremost organizations that foster communities. They are in partnership with individuals and other organizations, all of whom have a central focus. They are task specific entities. There is a diagnostic and prescriptive component, a training component, a research component, and a leadership and marketing component.
The new institutions are dynamic structures, with the capacity to change, realign, and refocus as the world evolves. Their existence is inticately interwoven in cyberspace. They use the tools of technology. They continually retool. The staff of the new institution is defined by the tasks they address, not by the label of their profession or by their company title. The institution is funded by the new wealth, knowledge management.
If we wish to bring new leadership to the problem of blind navigation, we must create a new institution that follows the guidelines outlined in the paragraph above. This begins under the umbrella of a foundation; a non-profit center, and it evolves into an independent entity that supports itself by managing knowledge.
The step beyond 3-dimensional projection is form generation. 3-D images will be given substance in special machines that replicate shapes (like thermoform maps). Blind children will be able to explore environmental concepts from the comfort of their classrooms (exploring virtual fire hydrants, traffic lights, Rodan statues, tree leaves and cat whiskers).
If all this sounds like wild science fiction, remember Moore's Law, and the movement to the 33rd square of the chessboard (weird things are about to happen). Remember too that holograms, virtual game machines, and 3-D television are realities now. We are not too far away from the holideck of the Star Trek Enterprise.
1. It must show that navigational technologies are needed. Blind travelers are very effective using $25 canes and using native sensory abilities, like auditory and kinesthetic skills. It must also show that these tools are inexpensive enough and small enough to be acceptable to blind consumers.
2. It must show that the time is unique for a new institution to evolve. There is a history of electronic travel aid inventions. There are boxes filled with inventions that did not live up to their hype. Why is this time and why are these tools special. It must be demonstrated that there is a need for this generation of tools.
3. It must show that there is a need for prescribable tools. Not every blind traveler has the same set of problems and needs. New technologies need to be adapatable, they must evolve with Moore's Law. The new institution must show how this need will be fulfilled.
It may seem to go without saying that blind individuals, children in particular, need to be trained to acquire navigational skills. This howeveris an assumption that lay populations may not understand. We need therefore to make this case first before we address the three needs listed above.
Response to the sight of a human face is hard wired in the brain. When a parent is urging a child to crawl or walk, it is partly the parent’s face and partly the parent’s gesturing motions that encourage the very young child. The parent’s voice alone lacks the motivational power that vision provides.
Even before a very young child begins to walk, a tremendous amount of information about the world is gathered. The child combines sensory inputs and associates these with objects and people. If a sighted child spots a toy, the child reaches, grasps, and brings the toy to them for examination. This examination is multisensory; a combination of oral, tactual, olfactory, visual, and auditory exploration. This examination of objects leads to an understanding of the attributes in the environment which are constant and reliable. A neural representation is established in the brain of the repeatable patterns that give the world stability. Very early exploration is tactual, but for the older child exploration and learning is visual.
A child’s ability to navigate freely is not just about independence and self sufficiency, it is also about brain development and the evolution of intelligence. The sensory exploration of the infant leads to percepts, which combine into concepts, which develop into cognitive abilities. Human beings must move and explore to develop the foundation for intelligence.
Physical development is also tied to a child’s mobility. The nonsymmetrical tonic neck reflex of the human infant causes the head and eyes to go up and outward when the infant pushes against the floor with the hands. The arms stiffen, the head goes up, the child’s eyes gaze forward, and the child becomes motivated to move toward what he or she sees. When there is no vision, the head droops back down. This head down position can become a habit that stretches the neck muscles, and if not behaviorally corrected results in blind adults who move through the world and address others with the face pointing to the floor.
There is also a neurological connection between the peripheral retina of the eyes and the cerebellum in the brain. The cerebellum is responsible for the smooth gait pattern that human beings exhibit. If the problem of blind navigation is not addressed at the earliest possible age (and worked on throughout the young years) blind children may not develop a smooth “sighted” gait, and may instead develop a blind gait that is often mis-interpreted as the walking pattern of a mentally or physically impaired individual.
Sighted children learn the gesture language of their culture, the facial expressions, eye movement patterns, body postures, and the hand and arm signals that make up the world of non-verbal, visual communication. These sighted children also watch and mimic the gait patterns of adults, the swing of the arms, the heel to toe walk, the head-up posture, the straight ahead, rhythmic flow of the “normal” moving human being. When a blind child cannot model the “normal” walking gait, they develop a slow, waddling walking pattern that is inefficient, unsafe, and which tends toward circular movement. In other words, not being able to mimic a normal gait pattern can result in poor navigational skills.
The navigational function of the vision system goes into full operation when a child first stands and attains the ability to walk. Human beings effortlessly move through space primarily because the vision system is superbly adapted for navigation. The peripheral processing area of the retina continually monitors optical flow (movement). It sends data to the parietal lobe on the right side of the brain where spatial relationships are mapped and remembered.
At a glance, the vision system can register the position of objects in a spatial area, and map routes to or around objects. Human beings have the ability to quickly determine the position of an object in space, and point to it. Sighted people have the ability to estimate how far away an object is, and they can estimate how far two objects are from each other. Vision instantly calculates whether objects are nearer or farther, higher or lower, more to one side or the other, and the system can figure how fast an object is approaching or receding. The central processing area of the retina additionally can determine size, length, depth, color, patterns, and texture. This entire sophisticated system is ready to go when a sighted child takes the first step.
Blindness, the absence of this sophisticated vision system, is a state where there is a paucity of information about the world. Blind students must spend more time exploring space and examining objects to arrive at the same spatial understanding as their sighted peers. To interact with the environment (to reach for objects, walk around obstacles, pass through open doors, etc.) the sighted individual uses a viewpoint-dependent representation of the world. From any position, and after each change in position, the sighted person instantly sees how the world has been repositioned, how objects have changed in relationship to movement. Blind individuals do not have an instantaneous viewpoint-dependent representation of the world. Blind students must build mental maps of layouts and of routes, and make future projections along the route based on non-visual memories. Blind students have to learn how to explore, and they have to spend more time actively researching their environment. A blind child’s first step is the beginning of a journey of exploration that will last a life time.
As children grow older, the spaces that they master become larger and more complex. Sighted children achieve this mastery so easily that the magnitude of the accomplishment usually goes unnoticed. The sighted child’s visual perceptual system is built from the everyday, all the time (and seemingly random) visual scanning of the environment. The blind child does not possess this scanning tool. As blind children grow older, the move into increasingly complex spaces can become overwhelming. Unless an early tactual/auditory strategy for exploring and understanding simple spaces has been successful, the move to more complicated space can be unproductive. The untrained blind child will become increasingly dependent and incapable as they grow older and as the environment becomes more challenging.
By the time a blind child reaches elementary school, or in the early school years, the child must have a set of preliminary skills upon which to establish sophisticated travel abilities. The blind child must understand how to travel in a straight line, and know how to make 90 degree turns. The child must know how to remain still and not bounce around so that their position in space remains stable. They must understand left from right, front from back, up from down, and they must understand many positional and environmental concepts. The blind child must know how to move the body in relationship to landmarks and must understand how landmarks are used to travel routes. By these early years the child, if they are to become successful blind navigators, must be able to discriminate and localize environmental signals, mostly from sound sources. Kinesthetic memory is a special kind of movement-related perception that can only be established and refined through practice. Kinesthetic memory is recall for time and distance traveled; it is neurologically imbedded as muscles are moved. When all of these capabilities are honed, the blind child is ready for concentrated and more complex orientation and mobility lessons (the advanced skills needed to navigate as an adult).
Throughout the elementary and middle school years, the blind child must explore complex indoor environments, houses, schools, churches, stores, malls, banks, etc. The goal is to understand environmental concepts, that all places have floors, ceilings, walls, doors, windows, shelves, hall or aisle ways, etc. The goal is also to learn specific layouts, that grocery stores, malls, departments stores, and every other variety of structure has a planned organization that can be generalized to the same kind of store in another location (a supermarket in New York City is very like another supermarket in Atlanta). The student must also learn that although there are layouts that can be generalized, locations are also individual, like no other place. These concepts can only be truly learned through a great deal of directed practice (or self-familiarization for the older student).
As children get older, they need to learn outdoor environmental concepts. They need to experience streets, curbs, sidewalks, driveways, walkways, porches, yards, buildings, etc. They need to learn that outdoor layouts follow the same pattern as indoor layouts, ie. that they are planned, and that generalizations can be made from one location to the next, but that every outdoor location is also like no other. All of this knowledge must be painstakingly assembled through practice and first hand experience.
By the time a student leaves high school they should be able to form complex mental maps. They should be able to visualize movement through mental spaces and project the need for turns and for positioning their body to locate objectives. Young adults should be able to travel in unfamiliar locations successfully, and they should have a workable strategy for self-familiarization within novel environments. They should also be able to create and maintain a complex, computerized record keeping system relevant to environments, spatial layouts, and routes. They should also be able to cross the most complex intersections, and travel in the complicated atmosphere of any big city. The young accomplished blind traveler should also be able to travel on any form of public transportation, and be able to negotiate complex airports and depots. If the young adult is to be successful in the adult world of the sighted, they will have to be capable in all these sophisticated tasks.
It is at the level of the young adult that the tools and strategies of traditional orientation and mobility begin to break down; to be less helpful. At this time in history, the age of intelligent machines (Kurzweil reference), there is great promise for new tools and new strategies.
Early navigational training, no matter how complete and expert, cannot address all environments and all circumstances. The sophisticated blind traveler will face challenges that require tools and strategies beyond the scope of typical orientation and mobility lessons. A multi-layered set of navigational technologies are evolving that substitute for vision and/or that aid in navigation. The sophisticated blind traveler must keep abreast of these technologies. They should become expert in the use of new tools and adapt to improvements every one to two years; the current pace of technological change. This ideal is hindered by the lack of an overall policy and infrastructure for developing these technologies and making them available.
Many advanced orientation and mobility lessons, those designed for the competent high school student, challenge the blind traveler to explore never before visited destinations. To be successful at this sophisticated task requires a high degree of preparation and planning. It requires the student to communicate with officials, to do data research, to keep organized and complete records, to overcome fears, and to make backup plans to insure safety should anything go wrong. It can involve using non-professionals to help with familiarization. The more a student moves into and conquers unknown spaces, the more the student becomes confident and accomplished.
If the working blind adult has a family and children, there is the added responsibility of child care and family maintenance. Now the blind individual must not only be concerned with personal navigation, but must be responsible for the whereabouts of children.
There is a direct connection between an individual’s ability to navigate independently and the number and severity of additional impairments. Since most blind individuals have additional impairments, the problem of independent navigation is even more severe than it first appears. It is hard enough to navigate when only blindness has to be circumvented, but add additional impairments and the task becomes immense.
1. Current and historically established navigational strategies. These include “independent” travel (using human sensory abilities with no other aids); use of a sighted guide; use of the long cane; and use of dog guides.
2. Precursor inventions, early research and development. These are the first generation electronic travel aids (ETAs) like the Mowat Sensor, Sonic Glasses, the Pathsounder, and the Laser Cane.
3. State of the Art navigation technologies. The development of navigation aids took diverse approaches. Some researchers concentrated on developing a visual prosthesis or vision substitution system. The KASPA system developed by Leslie Kay in New Zealand falls in this category. KASPA uses sound wave propagation to mimic the operation of vision. A second category is pattern recognition (machine vision) . These devices are on the threshold of development. Early character recognition systems like those developed by Kurzweil for print recognition will be modified to interpret and report real time movement. Global positioning systems offer a third development. These systems report orientation (position) anywhere on earth. A fourth research approach addresses vision enhancement systems that digitally magnify images. Night vision technologies fit in this category. A fifth avenue for navigational research is in the area of environmental manipulation. These are the talking signs and audible traffic signals that many communities are installing to help blind travelers.
The four travel strategies share common features that put them at a disadvantage compared to emerging technologies. All are low resolution approaches. Low resolution aids may give information about the location of objects, but they cannot name or label unfamiliar objects or concept classes, and they cannot consistently detect movement. These strategies also work best in near space and become progressively less useful for probing and analyzing intermediate and distance spaces. They allow for reasonably high levels of independence in familiar environments, but become decreasingly unreliable as environments become more unfamiliar, complex and/or dangerous. These approaches do not bring the blind travel closer to the normal perceptual tools available to the average sighted traveler.
The greatest drawback to the sighted guide technique is that it is not a tool for independent travel. It requires that another human being be present as a substitute vision and navigation system. The control of sensory input is not personal; the blind traveler is not directing the sweep and focus of sensory information gathering.
The primary disadvantage of the long cane is it’s limited resolution. It is a near space tool and it does not identify spatial position, or objects. It does not move the blind traveler closer to the abilities offered by sight.
Dog guides have a few disadvantages. There is cost for dog care and maintenance, and there is a responsibility for taking care of the dog’s needs and welfare. Like the other tools in this category, dog guides do not enhance the blind travelers sensory skills. There is still a reliance on “outside” support.
Early electronic travel aids offered a valuable alternative or addition to the traditional navigation tools used by blind individuals. They provided higher resolution than other tools, and brought blind travelers rudimentary instruments with capabilities closer to that of the human vision system.
Electronic travel aids came at the beginning of the age of intelligent machines. They were too expensive, too raw, unreliable in poor weather, and they did not always live up to their hype.
To understand the significance of this next generation of navigational technologies, we need to take a thorough look at our time, and especially the age of the intelligent machine.
First of all, of course, the tool will be part of the clothing, unseen, but probably not unheard. Where it is will be up to the individual. More than likely, the navigational tool will be in all parts of the clothing, from the shoes, to the belt buckle, to the head band (and more). The device will be linked to the internet, to a powerful server computer specifically tailored to the blind traveler.
it will talk; it will listen; it will be a global positioning system, it will link to signage; it will be a KASPA and Pathsounder system; it will have face recognition; it will have real time video analysis; it will be 360 degrees; the resolution will be tunable, it will have obstacle avoidance radar; related to sensory expansion devices designed for the sighted public (enhanced electronic vision and hearing); it will have night scope ability
Notes:
Historical development of all mobility aids (dog, cane, SG, ETA); limitations of each. Show that development has been sporadic and developed for specific age groups, no centralized leadership, no effort to coordinate agencies, etc.......
1. The sighted child’s visual perceptual system is built from the everyday, all the time visual scanning of the environment. “The theory of neuronal group selection provides a compelling etc. see Leslie Kay’s notes. A blind child must be taught to use new navigational technologies and must log many hours of practice before substitute neuro-perceptual pathways can be laid down in the brain. New technologies require expert training and guided practice.
2. It is ironic that just as the revolution in technology is about to present us with aids that will improve navigation, the number one champion of this technology Nottingham University, has dropped the mobility program.
3. We have reached a time when we will be able to prescribe technologies for navigation depending upon age, need, and type and degree of impairment (visual or otherwise).
4. In some cases we need to prescribe sensory enhancement (augmented) magnification, night vision, wider field of vision; in other cases we need vision substitution: identification of objects or people, take over the role of vision for avoiding obstacles, determining safety, improving movement efficiency. The two obviously overlap.
5. Long term studies conducted by Leslie Kay, show that blind children using KASPA can gain knowledge about their surroundings through the natural act of “looking” at things using bio-acoustic technology. Sufficient spatial detail seems to be made available by the auditory information from KASPA to class it ads a “vision Prosthesis” which encourages locomotor exploratory behavior.
6. The search for a visual prosthesis has lasted 30 years (Leslie Kay).
7. Remember that inventors and innovators like Leslie Kay and Bill Love are retired and in their seventies. These individuals are the intellectual and emotional champions for keeping these technological approaches alive. They know the rationale and they know the history. That is one reason why we need a non-profit foundation; to keep these visions alive.
8. Reasons we need the non-profit institute:
There is no structure (organized way) to: fund research; evaluate research; repair and purchase technologies; plan for generational development and deployment (keep pace with Moore's law); merge or unify technologies into prescribable navigational appliances; and there is no way to rally, market or articulate (ie. there is no "global" leadership)
9. The institute would: do assessment of need, and prescribe individualized navigational tools; do field research; study the effect of the tools on children during different developmental stages and under differing amounts of secondary handicapping conditions; develop and improve upon present navigational aids; raise funds for inventors; search for the Holy Grail Research References and Notes
1984
Pelli and Seno
Institute for Sensory Research at Syracuse University
Studied how visual restrictions limit the ability to traverse a maze. They found that the
visual requirements for this task are very low; substantial restrictions can be tolerated
before performance is affected (10 degree fields, contrast reduction by more than a factor
of ten, spatial frequency of less than i cycle per degree). These findings indicate that very
little spatial information is required for obstacle avoidance; most people with low vision
can perform obstacle avoidance.
1982
Marron and Bailey
showed tha visual field and contrast sensitivity are better predictors of performance on
O&M tasks than acuity.
1984 Pelli and Pelli- retina Foundation in Boston; vision enhancement
baldwin@cris.com