Tech Talk by Rylan Vroom, Access Technology Instructor Indoor Navigation Indoor navigation will be the next big technology to rock the accessibility world. GPS applications like Blind Square and Nearby Explorer have made it much easier for a visually impaired person to get around outside and know what they are passing along the way. But, it is still next to impossible to obtain information about the inside of an unfamiliar building and how to navigate it. Upcoming indoor navigation systems will solve this problem quite handily. All of the ones currently in development make use of Bluetooth powered beacons to tell users where they are and how to get from point A to point B. The most popular of these systems in Canada at present is Blind Square. Its authors have built support in for Apple's low powered Bluetooth beacons, called "i Beacons", allowing them to be obtained by anyone and set up in any building. However, at this point, instructions for those beacons can only be added into Blind Square's system with its parent company's permission. Within the next few years, a person will have the ability to walk into a shopping mall, hotel or office building, and their phone will instantly connect to the first beacon called "lobby". A message will be displayed saying something like: "Lobby, reception desk is to the left at 9:00, a bank of three elevators are at 12:00, and the hallway to first floor offices is at 3:00." If the user turns down the aforementioned hallway, the phone will connect to its beacon which will send alerts about what the offices are as the user walks past them. If you have Blind Square on your iPhone, you can get a firsthand look at how its indoor navigation system works when you next visit the CNIB building at 1929 Bayview Avenue in Toronto. Make sure that "beacon detection" is enabled in your copy of Blind Square for best results. To do this, open Blind Square, tap the "Other button", tap settings, Bluetooth settings and make sure "beacon detection" is set to "on". To get all the information about Blind Square's indoor navigation capabilities including a video on how it works in one of the largest shopping malls in the world, visithttp://blindsquare.com/indoor/ -- The following information is important for all members of the V iPhone list. If you have any questions or concerns about the running of this list, or if you feel that a member's post is inappropriate, please contact the owners or moderators directly rather than posting on the list itself. Your V iPhone list moderator is Mark Taylor and your owner is Cara Quinn - you can reach Cara at [email protected] The archives for this list can be searched at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "VIPhone" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/viphone. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
