Flying Blind: Apps Help Visually Impaired Navigate Airport

Navigating airports can be tricky.

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They’re loud, crowded and not always laid out intuitively. They’re even more challenging for visually impaired people. Chieko Asakawa knows those challenges firsthand, and she has also devised a remedy. Asakawa has been blind since she was 14 and is now an IBM Fellow and a professor in Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute. This spring, she and other researchers at Carnegie Mellon launched a navigation app for Pittsburgh International Airport that provides turn-by-turn audio instructions to users on how to get to their destination, be it a departure gate, restaurant or restroom. Pittsburgh is one of a growing number of airports around the globe to provide wayfinding apps. The Pittsburgh app, called NavCog, was first used at the Carnegie Mellon campus and works almost like an indoor GPS. “Independence is very important,” she said. “Technology has been helping us to be more independent and this is one of the examples. We still have a lot of challenges, but we will keep working to make it easier.” Typically, visually impaired travelers arrive at the Pittsburgh airport and request an escort, Asakawa said, but escorts aren’t available until passengers check in. So they must reach the counter on their own. The escort brings passengers to their gate and leaves, she said. For Asakawa, if she wanted a coffee, or if the flight was delayed, it was very difficult to manage, and very often she’d just be stranded at the gate. With NavCog, she can get up and find the gift shop or coffee shop or even just wander