The Norway Post, Norway Tuesday, October 09, 2007 Better traffic information for the blind By Rolleiv Solholm The Norwegian Highway Department and the SINTEF research Group are hoping to introduce a new real time traffic information system for the blind and sight impared. Tests have already been carried out in cooperation with the Association for the Blind. The AKTA system is based on information via the mobile phone and the GPS system. The buses must have a GPS based computer which keeps track of where the vehicle is at any given time, regardless of the official time schedule. This system communicates with the blind person's mobile phone, which will give a spoken message when the bus is approaching the stop where he or she is waiting. On the bus, the GPS will communicate to the passenger when the bus is approaching the desired stop, which has been pre-set before the trip began. The system will also inform the driver that a passenger wants to get off at the stop. This will give the sight impared easier access to public transport and at the same time help ensure that he or she doeas not get off at the wrong stop. So far the tests have been carried out on the long distance route between Kristiansund and Aalesund, but the aim is to introduce the system nationwide. (VG/SINTEF) 09.10.2007 06:10 http://www.norwaypost.no/cgi-bin/norwaypost/imaker?id=106873 BlindNews Mailing List Subscribe: BlindNews-Request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "subscribe" as subject Unsubscribe: BlindNews-Request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe" as subject Moderator: BlindNews-Moderators@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Archive: http://GeoffAndWen.com/blind RSS: http://GeoffAndWen.com/BlindNewsRSS.asp More information about RSS feeds will be published shortly.