Smart Information - Shopping, Banking
and Wayfinding
Steve Tyler, Head of solutions strategy and planning
RNIB
Introduction
RNIB Strategy 2009-14 which has been driven by our members to end
the isolation challenges that blind and partially sighted people face:
 Preventing avoidable sight loss
 Enabling independent living
 Bringing about an inclusive society
Most challenging tasks are the everyday tasks that we all take for
granted but are essential to everyday living:
 Shopping
 Looking after your money
 Finding your way
There is a clear need for people-delivered support, especially for over
50% of blind or partially sighted people who find it challenging to leave
their home environment.
Today I want to talk about
 Information
 Presentation of that information
 Giving people the confidence, knowledge, feeling of safety and
security.
 Feeling of control and independence and a removal of the sense of
dependency
 Put in to context the challenges people face when they travel
A definition of accessibility
Inaccessibility can be measured by comparing the user experience of a
person with specified functional limitations and capabilities and that of a
person without the specified functional limitations and capabilities.
An ideal measure is one that measures the efficiency and effectiveness
of completion of a task or interaction; however the focus is centred on
the issues brought about by the functional limitation or capability.
From a standing start…
When mobile technology began to take shape, there was a lot of
excitement about:
 New ways of doing everyday tasks
 Business opportunities
 Creativity
 Access to information.
The growth of mobile services has taken networks, manufacturers and
enterprises of every sort by surprise, in terms of the staggering speed of
growth, and the services. The most notable of these was text
messaging, and then the growing use of data based services.
How smart is smart
We are living in a world where technology has gradually become simpler
to use and yet the complexity required to make it work has grown
exponentially.
We are beginning to be able to engage with:
 Smart travelling companions that are not people
 Companions that give you access to most books published,
newspapers and magazines, retail, finance.
There is a lot of work to do to find optimum ways of delivering
information in multimodal form.
Image based information blended with graphical data and the handling
and merging of this data in to a single seamless and accessible
experience – is the world we’re now in.
We’re at the beginning of this chapter because technology and
commercial viability has caught up with our ambition. But the interface
and user experience still elude us.
Real time is changing, value-add information is finally on its way –
bringing with it though the next range of accessibility challenges.
Envisioning a new world
Smart information has particular types of attributes apart from the data
itself. They include:
 Merging of information from very different data sets
 Making localised calculations to deliver user-appropriate or userselectable information
 Based on environmental or user profile variables, delivering useful
information
 Giving people timely information
 Not overloading users with too much information whilst giving them
choices about having more if they need more
 Having interfaces that are instantly manageable and intuitive in nature
So what’s available now for end users
We have gathered data that clearly shows that accessible products are
better products per se for the general public.
There are a number of apps built on the IOS smartphone platform which
are clearly showing the beginnings of smart information delivery and full
accessibility.
Two examples:
 UK Train Times
 Google maps app (v2)
Shaping smart information for our customers
We have spent time informing the app development community,
standards agencies, sat nav providers, and technology deliverers of
what we want and why we want it.
We have written academic and research journal articles to ensure that
there is detail for those who need it, and have been carrying out handson work with developers, from conference presentations, app
development sessions and putting out proofs of concept, etc.
Focussing on travel…
Examples of the kind of considerations a blind or partially sighted person
has to give include:
 Planning the journey;
 Leaving my front door, how do I get to the bus stop?
 Which bus do I get?
 What is the layout – how can I find a seat?
 How will I know I’ve got to my stop;
 When I’ve got off the bus, where do I go next;
 How do I get to the entrance of the shopping centre?
Different journey combinations bring different challenges.
Even the most confident and competent of travellers currently require a
level of assistance as a direct result of not being able to see, or not
being able to see enough.
And how are we shaping the information?
One of our biggest wins has been that of data discovery.
Ordnance Survey collects data, giving such detail as:
 Crossings
 Railings
 Paths and walkways
 Fixtures in street environments
By utilising this data and adding it to more regular mapping data, and
using a level of intelligence to allow a system to deliver real meaning for
the user has been the challenge.
Delivering the future today….
We will shortly be releasing, in partnership, the first app that attempts to
do this.
Users will see behaviours in the app that are different to more standard
offerings.
 It will give haptic feedback to alert you to going off course, or confirm
you are on the right track.
 It will recognise your need to take the next right, but account for
barriers at your crossing point and guide you to the correct area.
 It will give you contextual information about your surroundings whilst
intelligently removing buildings and places of interest that are not in
your direction of travel.
There are accuracy issues because of general sat nav accuracy issues,
but these are improving all the time.
Thanks for listening, any questions…?
steve.tyler@rnib.org.uk