I thought that I’d open this stream with this project that I’ve recently had the pleasure of working on. We are working closely with the Youth Forum at the Royal London Society for Blind People (RLSB), exploring what it could be like for a vision impaired person using the London transport network in the near future.
Earlier this year the RLSB Youth Forum published their Youth Manifesto, which identified the most life changing priorities for vision impaired young people one of which sparked wayfindr’s development. Being able to travel independently anywhere at any time is a key challenge that vision impaired people face day to day. Be it getting to work or meeting friends, public transport is often the only way affordable to travel; with driving out of the question and taxis quickly becoming a costly alternative.
In response to their manifesto, we worked with members of the RLSB Youth Forum to investigate ways to make independent travel cost effective and accessible. The challenge we set ourselves was to use ‘off the shelf’ products, compatible with the devices they already use, rather than getting into expensive bespoke hardware development, or speculate too far into the future of what technologies might we use. We wanted to see if we can solve this challenge now.
Read about the approach to designing wayfindr at:
http://ustwo.com/blog/designing-wayfindr/
Find more about the RLSB Youth Manifesto at:
http://www.rlsb.org.uk/youthmanifesto
