[accessibleimage] Audio Maps, Enabled, Menus

blog
http://getaroundguide.blogspot.com/2007/05/study-shows-hotel-web-sites-lacking-in.html
Talking menus
Today’s Herald features a creation by one of our very own residents. Susan Perry of Miami has created talking menus – literally, a device that tells you what’s on the menu – which she hopes to sell to restaurants that want to offer a service to visually impaired diners. Some think Menus That Talk is a good idea, others are not so sure restaurants will buy into it. 
http://mangoandlime.net/2007/05/18/bites-this-week-in-food-514-518/
http://www.menusthattalk.com/
article includes audio files
http://www.miamiherald.com/298/story/110593.html
Entrepreneur's talking menu helps visually impaired
BY MADELEINE MARR
The light-bulb moment came over lunch and laughs last summer at the Olive Garden in West Miami as Susan Perry struggled to read the menu to her visually impaired niece.
Jessica MacWithey, 24, has macular degeneration, Perry, 50, had forgotten her reading glasses, and the blind-leading-the-blind scenario cracked them up.
''I joked that we needed a braille menu,'' Perry says. 'But Jessica informed me that most legally blind people don't read braille. Then I thought, `Wow, what we need is something that speaks.' ''
Less than a year later, Perry is heading to Chicago to launch her invention, Menus That Talk, at this weekend's National Restaurant Association show.
Perry says she's invested $250,000 into the project and bets she can turn a profit before the year is out.
Her aim is to convince some of the nearly one million U.S. restaurants -- roughly a third are chains -- to buy talking menus to serve visually impaired Americans.
''It helps people do easily what we take for granted,'' Perry says in her Kendall office, skimming her fingers over the hand-held device, which could be mistaken for an oversized Game Boy. Buttons correspond to food categories -- burgers, salads, desserts, etc.
She pushes ''Appetizers'' and a pleasant female voice begins, ``Thai Phoon Shrimp. Tender, crispy shrimp with a sweet and spicy chile sauce, $7.99.''
Press the ''español'' button, and appetizers become aperitivos, expanding the target market to language-limited as well as visually impaired diners.
''Two of my daughters married Cubans,'' Perry says. ``Whenever we went out to eat with the whole family, there was always someone who had trouble ordering.'' 

MAKING DEALS
Menus That Talk (www.menusthattalk.com) has no signed contracts, but is generating interest. A number of purchasing managers have promised to stop by the booth at the show, Perry says.
It would cost a restaurant about $4,000 a year, including menu updates and insurance, to purchase five units.
''I predict this is going to be very hot. It's catering to a huge market,'' says Renée Rentmeester, president of Miami's Vision World Foundation and creator of the public television show Cooking Without Looking, noting that an estimated 17 million Americans are visually impaired.
Others are not so sure. Richard Lackey, a veteran restaurant consultant with offices in Palm Beach Garden and London, questions if there are enough visually impaired diners to prompt restaurants to buy the menus.
''At first blush, I would say the jury is certainly out,'' Lackey says. ``But if they are able to sell to a chain like T.G.I. Friday's or Chili's then they will automatically create a home run for themselves, because other chains won't be one-upped or appear to not be socially conscious.''
Perry has models for Outback (with Australian announcer), Hard Rock Cafe (Elvis impersonator) and Olive Garden (you guessed it, Italian accent) to show off in Chicago.
''We tried to have some fun with it,'' she says. ``You go to a restaurant to be entertained and relax.'' 

GETTING TECHNICAL
She developed the device with friend Richard Herbst, whose Kansas company, Control Vision, manufactures GPS for small airplanes. The talking menus will be tailor-made for each restaurant, which can program its own voice or leave it to the professionals. 

Menu changes won't be a problem.
''The whole updating process takes about 24 hours,'' says Perry. ''A voice actor e-mails an MP3 file of the recording, which we download to a data key'' that's sent to the restaurant and slipped into the machine. 

Perry's niece, for one, is stoked.
''You want to eat something new and hear the description, but having someone always read to you is embarrassing,'' says MacWithey, who works with her aunt. ``I always ended up with something simple that every place had -- like grilled cheese, soup or salad.''
Another ingenious feature for the whole dining party is a service light that blinks to summon the waiter. About time, no?
''I'm actually surprised this hadn't been invented yet,'' Perry says. 'But it wasn't so long ago that we were dragging around suitcases in airports. One day someone said, `Let's put on wheels.' Ideas come to you, and you have to run with them.'' 

article
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/05/15/soundmap_tec.html?category=technology
Auditory Map Orients by Sound
Discovery News
May 15, 2007 — Before venturing out into an unfamiliar area, most people scope out a map. But for the blind or visually impaired, using a map to get oriented is not an option.
An interactive computer program in development could change that. It paints a picture of a city, not with images, but with sounds. Not only could the technology aide the visually impaired by giving them a sense of place before they explore the unknown, it could also offer sighted people audio cues when in "blind" situations.
"A firefighter could get a signal through a helmet headset as soon as he is losing track inside a dangerous building or if he needs to be directed to a doorway or a victim," said professor Susanne Boll of the University of Oldenburg in Germany.
The interactive map allows a person to explore a city either from a bird's eye perspective or by walking through a virtual, three-dimensional environment. The traveler explores the city by moving a stylus across a tablet PC. The stylus and the edges of the PC help the person feel the extent of the map and develop a mental model of the space.
Geographic features such as buildings, parks, lakes and tourist sites are represented by corresponding sounds. For example, a park sounds like singing birds, lakes sound like dabbling water and sightseeing spots sound like camera shutter clicks.
"There is no other project that really does a transfer from a visual map with its geographical relations and distances into a non-speech sound environment," said Boll. Because hearing all objects at once could cause a lot of confusion, the map comes with an auditory torch, which the person can use to acoustically illuminate large or small areas one at a time. Only features falling under the glow of the torch will make noise as the traveler moves the torch around. And nearby objects sound louder than those farther away.
Ben Shneiderman of the University of Maryland, College Park, calls the interactive map "an inspirational prototype." 

"It works fine for small examples and it's a promising direction," he said.
However, Shneiderman added that while it's important to make the sounds unique, that means there is a limit to how many can be incorporated into the map.
"If sounds are distinctive enough it helps, but once you start having too many different sounds, it takes you a while to figure out what's going on," said Shneiderman.
Boll and her team want to eventually pair the interactive map with tactile technology that would help the person navigate actual city streets.
Let's say the person has learned the map at home and wants to walk to the park. She would download information to a vibrating belt and wear the belt on her journey. Different sides of the belt would vibrate to cue her to turn left or right, guiding her to the ultimate destination. 


http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2007/05/could_audio_map.shtml
Could Audio Maps Help Us Navigate?
Most of us look at maps to find our way around. But maybe we could also locate where we are with our ears. A new interactive computer program tries it. "It paints a picture of a city, not with images, but with sounds. Not only could the technology aide the visually impaired by giving them a sense of place before they explore the unknown, it could also offer sighted people audio cues when in 'blind' situations."
link to pdf article Interactive Exploration of City Maps with Auditory Torches 
http://mmit.informatik.uni-oldenburg.de/download/Interactive_Exploration_of_City_Maps_with_Auditory_Torches.pdf

http://mmit.informatik.uni-oldenburg.de/veranstaltungen/
Auditory Maps at CHI Interactivity 2007
Wilko Heuten presents his research on "Interactive Exploration of City Maps with Auditory Torches" at 2007's CHI conference in May. In our presentation, we show an an interactive auditory city map, which uses 3D non-speech sound to convey the position, shape, and type of geographic objects. For the interactive exploration of the auditory map, we designed different interaction methods to build a mental model of a spatial environment and allow blind and visually impaired people to access map information. We had the pleasure of Ben Shneiderman visiting our stand and exploring the city maps himself. See more about our demo and CHI 2007 under our Auditory Maps at CHI 2007 event. 




http://www.enabledweb.org/public_results.htm

Enabled Enhanced Network Accessibility for the Blind and Visually Impaired
http://www.enabledweb.org/project_desc.htm#description
Project description
Top Page <#top>
The continuing growth of broadband multimedia networks in Europe has an ever-increasing impact on people’s lives. Information can be accessed remotely and in the comfort of people’s own home; people can interact with friends and family via email, instant chat or Voice over IP; services such as online shopping, paying bills and “distance learning” are now offered to the public. However, people who are visually impaired, or who have other forms of disability are, in many cases, not able to take full advantage of all these integrated computing and telecommunications services (ICT) facilities. This is primarily due to the inaccessibility to this user-group of the visual based content being offered by ICT products and services.
The ENABLED project is researching the network aspects of this particular form of the “Digital divide” by providing accessible map information and using the capability of fixed mobile convergence in networks to support the mobility of visually impaired people.
The ENABLED project, has therefore allocated its effort to two specific tasks: 

   * (1) Developing technologies that create accessible graphical
     content on broadband multimedia networks, primarily concerning
     indoor and outdoor maps;

   * (2) Developing “ubiquitous” tools that enable easy access to the
     map information, and interfaces that are adaptable and
     interoperable no matter where the users are and what equipment
     they are using.
To achieve these objectives, research and development work will be focused on three supporting tools: 

   * (1) an annotation tool for audio and haptic map representations;

   * (2) adaptable interfaces for exploration of maps and route-planning;

   * (3) a navigation aid provided through wireless networks.
With the aim of providing ubiquitous access to map information and network-based services, the project is developing a navigation system that provides guidance for visually impaired pedestrians in both indoor and outdoor settings. Multimodal representations of indoor and outdoor maps are also under investigation in order to complete the whole navigation process, from route-planning to actually following the route. The research and development work will be supported by training activities involving local user organizations and SMEs. These training activities will form the basis of a sound foundation for the exploitation and dissemination of project results. The outcome of this project will directly benefit visually impaired people as the technologies developed will be deployed onto a commercial mobile navigation aid. 


Links from Enabled website
Haptic-Audio Maps video
video http://scalab.dibe.unige.it/enabled/enabled_maps.html
Haptic-Audio Graphs video
http://scalab.dibe.unige.it/enabled/enabled_graphs.html

http://www.enabledweb.org/download/h_a_g_prot92.pdf

Other related posts: