A joint venture between The Royal London Society for the Blind (RLSB) and ustwo (a global digital product studio), Wayfindr is setting the first open standard for digital, audio-based navigation. It is designed to empower vision impaired people to navigate the world independently. The project stems from a productive collaboration between a number of blind young people who were part of the RLSB Youth Forum and ustwo.
Wayfindr is standardising how you use your smartphone to get around in indoor spaces, such as stations, shopping centres and hospitals. We are working so that wherever you are in the world, indoors or outdoors, you can navigate independently with the confidence that the instructions you receive are reliable and consistent.
That is why Wayfindr are going to publish and maintain an open standard designed to inform developers and venue owners on how best they can standardise their system in the order to satisfy the navigation needs of vision impaired people across the world. The draft standard is based on trials in London and Sydney's metro systems with vision impaired people and has been developed in partnership with mobility, access and standard specialists.
The Wayfindr Standard will ensure that apps and locations that utilise a combination of smartphones and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons for audio wayfinding can offer blind and partially sighted users a clear and consistent experience.
Firstly, the Standard provides design and technical guidelines, alongside a demo app, to aid implementation of a digital navigation service. The guidelines cover areas such as the design of audio instructions (e.g. detail, length and language), needs per context, key features of interaction design for blind and partially sighted people and recognised measures to reassure and orient vision impaired people.
Secondly, the Standard provides guidelines on integration into built environments, covering the installation of BLE beacons, the configuration of a system per environment and its maintenance.
If you would like to learn more about the Wayfindr Community, please get in touch by emailing, katherine.payne@rlsb.org.uk.
For full details, visit the Wayfindr website (External link)