Device Invented in Israel to Help Visually Impaired Read
If you've encountered someone who is visually impaired walking down the street, you might have noticed that person using a particular kind of pikestaff: i that'south white, sometimes with a red band.
It'south white to make it very visible, and to indicate to others that the user can't meet.
For more 50 years, people accept tried to re-engineer this pikestaff. At that place have been more than 100 "smart" cane inventions — attempts to build a pikestaff that can detect obstacles and perform other functions electronically.
There's the UltraCane , the G Sonar , the C-five Laser Pikestaff … and the list goes on. Just none of these take come close to replacing the standard white cane.
Perhaps it has to do with cost. Smart canes can run anywhere from $100 to upwards of $i,000, while a standard white cane typically costs $20 to $60.
Or, maybe, the engineers designing these smart canes don't fully grasp the experiences and the needs of those who are blind. As a upshot, they often finish up edifice devices that innovate more complications to the user, interfere with the white pikestaff'due south natural dynamics, or otherwise miss the mark.
Room for comeback
People who are visually impaired accept used sticks and staffs as travel aids for centuries, but the white pikestaff was formally introduced in the 1920s and '30s , as cars became more popular and roads became riskier for pedestrians. The white color stood out confronting dark pavement.
After World War II, caregivers started developing techniques to help blinded soldiers regain their independence. That gave ascension to a whole new professional field, called orientation and mobility. By the '80s, orientation-and-mobility training was being developed for children preschool-age and younger. In the United States today, information technology'southward considered best practice to provide training equally early as possible, even starting in infancy.
Around the world, the white cane has become a symbol of self-reliance and nobility for people who are bullheaded. Only information technology has its limits.
At the Overbrook School for the Blind in West Philadelphia, students shared their challenges using canes. (Schoolhouse officials requested that just their first names be used to protect their privacy.)
"Sometimes, I have trouble getting effectually certain people, or finding certain objects," said Ethan, who is 17.
Big open up spaces and drop-offs, like curbs and steps, tin be difficult, said Dauad, who is 14.
Kennedy, v, said her cane gets caught on things, like grass or cracks in the sidewalk and pavement.
The white cane also tin't observe obstacles that are far away. It leaves the upper body vulnerable to overhangs, such every bit tree branches. And in that location can exist a steep learning curve with it.
Maybe considering of those challenges, but an estimated 2% to 8% of people who are visually impaired use white canes. The rest rely on other people, guide dogs, or their usable vision — nearly 85% to 90% of those who are blind or visually impaired really have some low level of sight.
Could in that location be a improve cane? One that more people desire to use?
For decades, inventors have tried to use whatever new tech is out there — sonar, ultrasound, GPS, artificial intelligence — to amend the part of the plain white cane.
Shlomi Hanassy knows all about that. About a decade ago, he was a student, working in a lab at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on a device chosen the EyeCane .
It used infrared rays to detect obstacles within 5 meters, and communicated with users through sound and vibrations. It was a promising engineering — previous devices were wearisome at detecting and communicating obstacles.
But the EyeCane "was fast," said Hanassy, who today owns his own technology research and evolution company in Jerusalem. "It was actually useful."
Hanassy's team showed that information technology took blind people less fourth dimension to learn how to use the EyeCane than other devices. There was a lot of positive media coverage .
"It worked very well, and y'all can read a lot of articles that bear witness that," Hanassy said.
Merely good press aside, many people who are blind are skeptical of technologies invented by sighted people like Shlomi.
Why exercise we demand this?
Daniel Kish, who lives in Southern California, feels he has no need for a smart pikestaff. He'south been blind since he was a baby, when both of his optics were removed because of a rare eye cancer called retinoblastoma. Very early on, he found his ain way of getting around.
"I began clicking and developing my ain form of sonar correct subsequently I lost my 2nd eye," Kish said.
He started using echolocation, or sonar vision. He would brand sounds — usually past clicking his tongue, but sometimes as well snapping his fingers or clapping his hands. And he'd listen to how the sound came back to him to get the texture, size and shape of objects.
Encephalon scans have found that when people like Kish utilize echolocation in lieu of sight, they're actually using the visual cortex , the region of the brain that processes sensory data from our eyes.
"It'll reconnect and rewire itself to wherever it needs to, to get together the data it needs," Kish said.
In his belatedly teens, Kish wanted to get more places and do more things. And then he learned to use a pikestaff. And that helped even more — echolocating helped him with objects at head and shoulder level, and the cane took intendance of what was at his feet.
"My perceptual organisation became a kind of seamless dynamic," Kish said. Today, he can sketch a room after clicking his way around it, ride a bike, and go along solo hikes. He'south fifty-fifty hiked the Swiss Alps lonely.
In 2000, Kish started a nonprofit, called World Access for the Blind , to teach more blind people his method of echolocating with a cane.
A big part of the technique is assuasive the cane to become an extension of oneself. He compared the pikestaff to a rat's whiskers.
"Rat's whiskers take certain qualities," Kish said. "They're very fragile, they're low-cal, they're flexible, they're conductive. So nosotros try to simulate that, if you will, with a cane. The lighter and more than delicate the touch, the more than information you're able to receive."
And that's one of Kish's chief gripes with smart canes. He believes that when you lot start adding batteries, sensors and buttons, you showtime interfering with all that.
"One of the things that happens, of course, is y'all make the cane heavier, you change the remainder of the cane," he said.
While a regular white pikestaff might weigh half a pound, a smart cane tin weigh more than twice as much.
Furthermore, all of the additional sound and vibratory cues can be distracting. And electronics make a cane more difficult to maintain: You take to charge information technology; the engineering science can malfunction; and now the device is susceptible to weather and dirt.
Most importantly, Kish worries that fixating on electronics will shift focus away from building a good foundation in orientation and mobility. He wonders if the resource spent on tech might be meliorate spent on pikestaff training that really nurtures the skills for independence that blind people already have. After all, these are the skills they'll always exist able to autumn dorsum on.
Smart canes, he said, ignore the reality that "we can provide a kind of pikestaff preparation that makes the cane basically a natural extension of the body, to where it is fluid and comfy and, to a higher place all, constructive."
Information technology matters who the inventor is
There are others, similar Kürşat Ceylan, who want a meliorate cane. Ceylan is a social entrepreneur from Turkey and has been bullheaded since nascency. He believes people who are blind should use available technology to their reward. After all, corporations aren't really thinking about visually impaired folks.
"Applied science has avant-garde so much, just unfortunately this area is non seen so assisting for the big companies," he said.
Ceylan has worked on many different technologies for the visually impaired , including a media platform , a navigation tool for shopping centers , and an interface that provides audio descriptions for movies .
His latest project is WeWALK , a new smart cane. It ultrasonically detects overhead obstacles. It as well integrates with a user'southward smartphone and syncs up with apps such equally Google Maps or with Amazon'south Alexa.
Ceylan said the effort arose from his own needs. "Do visually dumb people need improvements in their daily lives? Aye, I do," he said. "At least I do."
For example, Ceylan said, when he is waiting at the bus finish, he's always asking other people to permit him know when his bus, #43, arrives.
"Too, while nosotros are walking in the street, we don't know the name of the stores, or nosotros don't know the color of the traffic lights. And these are the bug that we have to solve," he said. "Visually dumb people tin be independent. We believe that."
Ceylan acknowledged the points some blind people make against smart canes.
"They're right," he said. "Visually impaired people have to develop their independence skills. And that's why they need the mobility training before using the cane."
He noted that smart canes are, indeed, heavier than regular canes. But if a heavier pikestaff imparts more confidence and independence, one might "prefer the heavier cane," he said.
Kish, the echolocator, said it's promising that more blind people are leading tech development. That makes a world of divergence, he said.
"Historically, a lot of these technologies were adult by sighted people — you cannot understand blindness from a sighted perspective," he said.
He added that sighted people brand "guesses most not seeing, based on their understanding of seeing." And often, what fuels those guesses are stigma, dread and anxiety.
"Most people are afraid of blindness," he said. "They feel it's among the summit four worst things that can happen to them, correct alongside of terminal illness, cancer and such."
Much of the marketing around smart canes and other technologies preys on this fear, according to Kish.
"When you look at information that is presented effectually various technologies and devices, information technology very much emphasizes what the blind person cannot do, or won't exist able to exercise. So there is a very much kind of 'we need to fix this' mentality," he said.
"I think that the whole perspective needs to be shifted from an assumption of deficit to an expectation of capacity," he added.
Think Shlomi Hannasy? The inventor in State of israel who was working on the EyeCane? He somewhen learned this his own way.
During the time he was working on the EyeCane, while on a run one twenty-four hour period, he happened to come across a cat on the street. He named the cat Zeevon, took information technology home with him, and soon realized the cat was blind. Since he was already working on EyeCane, he got to work making a wear device that would detect obstacles for Zeevon.
Merely he quickly realized the cat didn't need such a gadget.
"As much as I wanted to help this cat, with fourth dimension, I saw that it could manage past itself," he said.
Zeevon was fine staying abode lonely. He deftly maneuvered around the piece of furniture. He gracefully jumped from the kitchen counter to the top of the refrigerator.
The experience taught Hanassy a bigger lesson: that people who tin see oftentimes miss the ways the blind adapt and develop their ain ways of beingness in this world.
Sighted people don't know how it is to exist blind, Hanassy said. "Nosotros cannot sympathize, normally, the other senses so well."
Hanassy believes that illustrates a broader problem with tech — that, too often, developers try to create solutions for others based on assumptions, without taking the time to understand people.
"They simply develop the technology without considering what people really need," he said.
In the terminate, Hanassy ditched his efforts to make a device for his cat. And despite several years of development, the EyeCane never took off.
Source: https://whyy.org/segments/why-is-creating-electronic-canes-for-the-blind-so-hard/
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