Scientist helping sightless navigate  Monday, April 03, 2000  By
Anita Srikameswaran, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

The president of the American Association of Geographers knows firsthand
the difficulties visually impaired people face when they step outside
their front doors. Reginald Golledge became legally blind when he was 45
and in the middle of his geography career.  So he set aside his paper maps
and began developing innovative, high-tech tools that could help others --
sighted or not -- enhance their knowledge of geography on a scale ranging
from the shape and position of land masses on the globe to the location of
rooms in a public library.  Golledge, director of a research unit that
focuses on spatial reasoning at the University of California at Santa
Barbara, is in Pittsburgh for the 96th annual meeting of the association,
which begins tomorrow. About 4,000 people are expected to attend talks
held over six days at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center and the
Doubletree Hotel Pittsburgh, Downtown. During a break between yesterday's
meetings of the executive committee at The Westin William Penn, Downtown,
Golledge talked about the impact of his vision troubles on his career.
One night in 1984, while doing consulting work in his native Australia,
Golledge went to bed with a headache and woke up blind in his left eye. He
previously had 20/20 vision. He returned home to California, where doctors
told him that for some inexplicable reason, his optic nerve had been
damaged, destroying his sight. They assured him that his other eye would
not be affected.  "Eleven months later, the other eye went in exactly the
same way," he said. "It just came out of the blue and no one seemed to
know what caused it or if anything could be done for it. All I could do at
that time was pick up some vague shapes and motion as things moved around
me and passed me, but I couldn't identify what they were."  The geographer
was devastated, but he found ways to resume teaching and research. In the
late 1980s, an Australian professor devised maps and globes, initially for
Golledge's use and then revised for children, that allowed exploration of
geographical features through touch and sound.  "They can now feel the
shape of countries," Golledge said.  The special maps are used
internationally.  Between 1990 and 1994, Golledge was diagnosed with
colon, kidney and prostate cancer. After the courses of chemotherapy and
radiation, the geographer began seeing white spots in the darkness. His
eye specialist thought that somehow the treatments stimulated what
remained of his optic nerves.  "Now I can read some large print letters on
a large screen," Golledge said.  On Thursday, his colleagues and former
students will honor Golledge by giving talks on aspects of his research
and holding a panel discussion that he suspects will turn into a roast.
The study of geography has evolved over the last 40 years to become far
more than map drawing, Golledge said. Now it includes examination of
variations in culture and topography, the development of sustainable
environments and international relations. It also includes analysis and
interpretation of large amounts of data.  "Coordinate systems like ZIP
codes and street addresses all pinpoint a position on the Earth's
surface," Golledge explained. "So it's very easy to think of the [Earth]
as a world of information that can be represented digitally."  Global
positioning systems, for example, use satellite technology to find the
location of an object, such as a car. Add portable computers, and a
visually impaired person can have a personal guidance system that helps
him get oriented.  In 1990, Golledge and his colleagues began work on such
a device. It enables the user not only to find his location, but, as he
walks down a street, he can hear through headphones a computer voice
announce the names of nearby shops and offices. In a kind of auditory
virtual reality, the voice appears to come from the direction of the
building, allowing the person to locate it.  A personal guidance system
also might interest tourists. A traveler could get off a plane in Tokyo,
buy from a kiosk a CD-ROM based on a map in his or her desired language,
then listen to buildings announce themselves without having to decipher
visual signs.  For several years, San Francisco and Santa Barbara have
been examining a concept called auditory signage. Using an infrared
system, signs "talk" to visually impaired people through a hand-held
receiver. In a public library in San Francisco, for example, a transmitter
signals the receiver to tell the user that a washroom or water fountain is
nearby. At intersections, the street names are announced. In Santa
Barbara, the system was tested on buses.  "If Pittsburgh's going to create
an image of an information technology city, [it] should also pay attention
to making sure this technology is well-distributed amongst all its
population, including its disabled groups," Golledge noted.


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