[Art_beyond_sight_theory_and_research] Audio Maps, Enabled, Menus

[Lisa Yayla]

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