We all know that advances in mobile technology are opening up unprecedented opportunities for ever more powerful tools and applications. The potential for helping blind and partially sighted people get out and about is one of the less talked about, but it could be a biggie.
Before joining TechMarketView last week, I spent three years on something of a sabbatical from the tech sector working for the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association. But tech was never very far away, whether we were trying to enhance supporter engagement (yes, social networking is becoming huge for charities) or seeking new ways of helping blind people to be mobile and independent.
Tens of thousands of blind and partially sighted people in the UK find it impossible to leave home alone. One thing these people need is a tool that not only tells them where they are and which route of follow, but which also helps them to avoid the many obstacles in their paths (lampposts, cars, hedges, other people, the list is endless).
At present the best tool for independent mobility is probably a guide dog. But dogs aren’t right for everyone and they’re expensive to train and support. That’s why less than 2% of blind and partially sighted people in the UK use one.
White canes are widely used of course, and ultrasound and other technologies are increasingly showing up in various handheld gadgets. But what got me most excited was the possibility of bringing together a suite of technologies in a smartphone to produce a genuinely breakthrough – and crucially, more affordable - device.
Imagine combining satellite positioning, local information tagging (e.g. through RFID), mapping and object detection in one networked device, all with a voice/audio/sensory interface. These technologies all exist today, as do the phones that can support them.
There are some hurdles of course. Someone may need to install a lot of local tagging. More accurate public-use positioning would help too (and last week’s Galileo satellite launch reminds us this isn’t far away). But the real obstacle is in the “combining”. No single player has all the bits of the jigsaw, and no charity or pressure group is influential enough to trigger the required meeting of minds. But in the coming five-to-ten years, who knows? The potential is there.
As for the business case… We’re talking relatively long ROIs, inevitably. But there are 40 million blind people globally. The vast majority have lost their sight after the age of 60. And we are all living longer.