Trekker will guide blind via GPS
Navigation system 'talks' to users
Steve Makris
The Edmonton Journal
Tuesday, March 18, 2003
CREDIT: Steve Makris, The Journal
Keith Gillard, with guide dog Gucci, holds a Victor Pro digital book
reader that plays back prerecorded books in MP3 format on CD-ROM.
EDMONTON - Cutting-edge Canadian technology will give the visually
impaired unprecedented independence.
Quebec-based VisuAide will announce this week a portable
satellite-based navigation system for blind people.
Using GPS (global positioning system) technology, the Trekker will
"talk" to users, telling them where they are within four metres using
real street terminology.
And it will point out attractions like nearby hotels, restaurants and
museums.
The system will be announced at the Technology and Persons with
Disabilities conference at California State University Northridge in
Los Angeles.
Here is how it works:
- Users will download electronic maps on their Trekker personal
digital assistant, a Compaq Pocket PC, from the visuaide.com site.
- On the way to the destination, users can get the Trekker to describe
or show areas of interest.
- As they arrive on site, the Trekker's satellite receiver announces
the exact location and also shows it on an on-screen map.
Trekker technology will be available in a personal digital assistant,
for about $2,400, and in a note-taker device that records braille and
talks back, for $1,500.
A cheaper talking device without a screen will be available later.
VisuAide, which makes other products for the visually impaired,
including digital book readers and software that allows computers to
read text, claims most of its business is outside Canada.
"More than 70 per cent of our technology is sold abroad, to countries
like Sweden, England and Netherlands," said Yvan Lagace, VisuAide
vice-president of sales and marketing.
LACK OF SUPPORT
"Unlike Canada, these countries' governments provide the visually
impaired with most of the funding for devices to help improve their
lives."
But current technology, several years old, has had a tough time
finding its way to the visually and reading impaired, now estimated at
10 per cent of the population.
The Canadian National Institute for the Blind, or CNIB, started a
national campaign, "That All May Read", a year ago aiming to raise $33
million to help shore up its digital book library and buy new digital
book readers for the visually impaired.
The campaign, with six months to go, has only realized one-third of
its goal.
"As business gets tighter, the remaining companies that give are
getting inundated by other causes, so it's a challenge to us," said
campaign chairman and Microsoft Canada president Frank Clegg. "But
when we get a chance to show them what this campaign is about, they
get excited."
Microsoft Canada has donated $2 million in cash and in-kind services,
including a children's Web portal, for the CNIB library campaign.
The software giant, along with IBM, HP and other companies, are laying
the foundation for a digital book library.
"A worldwide library would take up 90 terabytes (90,000 gigabytes) of
digital book information that can be shared with the reading impaired
everywhere," said Gerry Chevalier, national chairman for the CNIB
library.
"We have the most advanced technologies in the world here, yet get the
least amount of federal support," said Chevalier.
"My frustration is we have the know-how to build a high-tech library
but no money to fill it up."
A digital library, according to Clegg, would allow people to download
audio on home PCs or affordable MP3-like audio players.
VisuAide plans to release a smaller digital music player, the Vib, for
$300 that will do exactly that.
Digital reading books contain a human voice recorded on a CD-ROM using
the international Daisy standard, which allows users to search by
chapter or even pages on any compatible device.
Currently, VisuAide's Victor Pro portable book readers are being
tested by the CNIB across Canada.
At $700 each, they play back books on CD-ROM and can remember user
page tags for future reference.
"Before the Victor Pro, life was hell," said Keith Gillard, from
Edmonton, who is almost totally blind.
"I used to contend with several cassette tapes, playing them back and
forth just for reading one book."
Despite his lifelong visual impairment, which has worsened recently,
Gillard has not learned braille.
"I like to use modern technology to get around," he said.
"Can you imagine me with my Seeing Eye dog, Gucci, and that GPS
Trekker?
"We will just rock."
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