Giving people back their independence in the airport

AA: What got you started on disability advocacy?

AW:

Quite a few years ago now, I was diagnosed with a very rare retinal condition, and at the time of diagnosis, the doctors were very surprised that I wasn’t completely blind already. At the time I was working as an academic, and I was reassured that with screen readers and all the available technology, I would still be able to do my research or teach my classes. The trick was going to be, how I was going to be able to find a lecture theatre or a classroom? Even though there would have been Braille signs on the doors, I was curious: if you’re blind, how do you even know that there is a Braille sign there? It doesn’t help with navigation. That started me on the journey of how accessible our current digital wayfinding methods are – the answer was “not very at all” – and then how I could help by creating something that would be accessible and would work indoors.

AA: How hard is it for people with visual impairments and other disabilities to navigate airports?

AW:

It’s very difficult. For starters, you’ve got a lot of people around you, so it’s noisy, it’s very busy, people don’t always look where they’re going, so they might not notice that you’ve got a cane and a guide dog. Without BindiMaps, the only way that somebody who is blind or has low vision can navigate an airport is with a sighted person. Bindi is short for “be independent”: we wanted to be able to give people back their independence so that they didn’t have to rely on the help of a friend or a stranger to get them around an airport.

BindiMaps also helps people who are in wheelchairs; we have wheelchair-accessible routing options, and again, sometimes lifts and things are not easily found in an airport or any other structure. Of course, if you can see and don’t need wheelchair-accessible routing, you can still use BindiMaps.

AA: What are some of the major accessibility issues in terms of the structure and design of airports?

AW:

All airports follow the accessibility guidelines that we have in the current construction codes – but that means that they will be putting in Braille signage, they’ll be putting in tactile dots on the ground. Those things in and of themselves are not a wayfinding solution. We wanted to bring in an actual way that somebody could get into an airport, find the front door, you can get yourself to a service desk, you can get to the check-in counters, from there you can go through security, you can get to a lounge, you can get to the coffee shop, you can go to the bathroom on your own and you can get to your plane, all independently.

At the moment, without BindiMaps, there’s no way – if you’re blind, you don’t even know where the front desk is if you’ve never been there before. Internal buildings are set up, basically, for people who can see. Our construction codes were written a long time ago, and certainly haven’t been updated with current digital wayfinding like BindiMaps in mind; Braille was invented a very long time ago, and it’s fantastic as a tool for people to read – but it doesn’t help with some of the complicated indoor structures that we now have, and we really need to be doing things to make sure that all people are included in our internal busy spaces.

AA: How does BindiMaps work?

We need some CAD drawings of the space, which we then load into the app. We also need to deploy a network of Bluetooth beacons – that’s how we get the localisation showing where you are in space, and it’s also how we then deliver the route from the user’s point of view. It’s an app that’s available on the Apple App Store, or the Google Play Store, it’s free to download, and there are no logins, so we’re not collecting any of your data.

Once you get onboard is when you get asked if you’re sighted and you would like to have a map mode; or, if you’re blind or have low vision, those maps have been translated into words. That’s what we did with the help of people with lived experience: you choose if you want text to audio, and then you can also choose if you want wheelchair-accessible routing or not.

Once you open the app, you are there in the space, and you can start to search for different things that you want, or you can search by categories – so if you were in one of our shopping centres to do your Christmas shopping, and you want to go and buy some jewellery, you can put in “jewellery” and you will be given a list of all of the jewellery stores that are there in the shopping centre, listed from closest to you to furthest away.

AA: What’s the BindiMaps user experience for people with visual impairments?

AW:

If you’re blind or have low vision, when you walk into the airport you get a notification – the only notification that we ever send to anybody who’s got the app is when you’ve entered a BindiMaps location – which would prompt you to open the app. Then what we would do is we’d give you an overview in words of the space that you’re in and what it’s like, and your closest three destinations, to give you a mind map of where you are and where you’re standing in space. If you want to go to gate 15, you would be able to put that into the app, and then the app would give you step-by-step directions on how to get to gate 15.

We’re accurate in our localisation to about a metre, so we know exactly where you are in space, which is very important if you’re blind or have low vision. Along the way, we can also give you extra information: let’s say you’re going to the bathroom – and not many people who are sighted will think of this – but when you’re in the bathroom and you’re blind, how do you know how the taps work? Well, you don’t, it’s trial and error – but we serve up that information. Again, it’s about giving people their independence.

AA: How can air travel generally be made more accessible to the visually impaired?

AW:

It all comes down to working with people with lived experience. I love it when I can do some user testing with somebody inside a place like an airport and really get to talk to them about their experience – what is it like for somebody going into an airport, what happens to them? At the moment, they may be greeted by a staff member and then taken and plonked down in a seat near their gate.

Now, they might be there for half an hour, an hour – up to three hours, if it’s an international flight – then what happens to them? I think we’ve got a long way to go to making everybody feel included in our different public spaces, making sure that things are available for them, and they’re not just an afterthought or a nuisance that needs to be told: “Go sit down over there and we’ll come and get you when we’re ready to put you on the plane”.