The Future of Blind Navigation

A child with little or no vision will face two life long challenges: accessing the world of
information; and navigating through space. Of the two, society has done a far better job of
opening the world of information. We have only begun to address the severe navigational
limitations that confront the blind traveler. This is unfortunate because, of the two limitations,
the loss of one's ability to independently move through the world is the more serious and has the
greatest negative impact on human development.

An entire cultural, governmental, and institutional infrastructure evolved to address the problem
of communications accessibility for the blind learner. This is understandable because access to
information is a right in a democratic country. There evolved a complex infrastructure to provide
information for the sighted population. It had only to be adapted for the blind. There is no
comparable cultural mandate for blind navigation. The sighted population can use vision to get
safely across streets, through a grocery store, to and from school, etc. Whereas the problem of
information access in the culture is common to both sighted and blind persons, the problem of
mobility is not.

Technology created reading machines, talking books, and computers that translate Braille. More
and more smart machines have expressive and receptive speech. These devices become smaller
and less expensive with each passing year. There is not a comparable set of breakthroughs with
navigational technologies. Communications technologies were easier to invent and consequently
were brought to market. Navigational technologies are complex and are not yet small enough or
inexpensive enough for the mass market. Technologies available for blind navigation are
insufficiently developed, adapted, and marketed.

It can be said that while todays communications technology is available to enable blind persons
to participate in school, on the job, and in leisure activities on a par with sighted peers, we can
point to no comparable progress in the area of blind navigation. There is less history of
coordinated effort to address blind navigation, and less governmental and institutional support to
confront this challenge. There is no Federal Navigational Support Center comparable to the
Federally funded American Printing House for the Blind. Furthermore, whereas extensive
funding is available for the purchase of communications tools, very little funding is available for
the purchase of the few and expensive navigational aids coming to market.

No one needs to be convinced that we are living in a revolutionary time. This is the age of
technology. The power and capacity of computers doubles every eighteen months. For blind
travelers this means that there are new tools, improved tools, and new hope coming in waves
year after year, like never before in history.
It is ironic that just as this computer revolution went into overdrive, the one institution in the
world that focused on blind navigational technology, the Blind Mobility Research Unit at
Nottingham University In England, closed it doors for lack of funding. Many ground breaking
technologies came out of Nottingham research, including the Sonic Pathfinder. The closing of
the Mobility Research Unit at Nottingham left the entire planet without leadership, just as blind
rehabilitation professions and blind consumers faced an onslaught of promising technologies and
research.

Even if Nottingham's program had not failed, the flood of emerging technologies would have
required the creation of new institutions to address the waves of possibilities emerging from the
research labs and technology companies. At this critical juncture in history, there is no organized
way to fund research or to purchase and service navigational technologies, no way to blend (and
bend) technologies for the benefit of blind travelers. There is no product champion, no structure
for rallying the troops, for marketing the tools, articulating the need, and refining and updating
the technologies. There is no global, focused leadership.

It is also ironic that the inventors and champions of many of the foundational electronic
navigation tools, are now retired. The inventors of KASPA, the Sonic Pathsounder, and the
signage infrared system for example, are all well into retirement. There is no institution
dedicated to the preservation of their work, and more significantly, there is no organization
dedicated to changing these inventions as technologies improve. Just as we are about to be
blessed with smaller, smarter, cheaper components to make these foundational inventions
affortable, practical and acceptable to the blind consumer, just when the promise is about to be
fulfilled, the ball is about to be dropped for lack of an institutional champion.

The Need for New Institutions

We can not know the future, but we can see trends that have substantial predictive power. We
can see how these trends have already played out, and we can feel the pressures for change
pushing in all around us. We also sense that old institutions are ill equipped to handle the new
challenges; they are too slow to react, too overloaded with administrative structure, and tradition
bound. Something new must be created. But this is the end of the story, not the beginning.

To understand why old institutions are failing, and to provide clues to the structure and operation
of new organizations, we must examine the reason for the changes and the trends that are causing
all the fuss in our world today.

Dr. Raymond Kurzweil, the inventor of the Kurzweil Reading machine for the blind, and author
of the book �The Age of Intelligent Machines� describes our era as a second industrial
revolution. The first industrial revolution replaced human muscle power, physical strength, with
machine power. Manual labor was replaced by machine labor. Dr. Kurzweil tells us that now we
are in the age when human intellectual labor is being supplemented or replaced by machine
intelligence. This is the age of the smart machine. Indeed, this is the age of smart stuff, smart
clothes, smart spaces, smart toasters, smart desktops. We are only at the very beginning of this
new industrial revolution. The impact on blind navigation is yet to unfold, but the promise is
great.

The promise of smart machines rides on a theory called Moore's Law. Gordon Moore, the co-
founder of computer chip maker Intel Corporation, made the observation that the number of
transistors packed on a computer chip was doubling every eighteen months. Furthermore, when
you examined history, it was obvious that this doubling of capacity had been going on since
computers were invented. Doubling the number of transistors on a chip means that every
eighteen months computer power doubled; we could do twice as much, twice as fast, every year
and a half. Moore's Law is the key defining trend of the technology age.

To understand how important Moore's law is, Dr. Kurzweil tells a story about the invention of
the game of Chess in China.

The emperor of China so loved the game of Chess that he offered the inventor of the game
anything he wished as a gift. The inventor asked that a grain of rice be placed on the first square
of a chess board, two grains on the second square, four on the next, then eight, 16, 32, 64, 128,
256, and so on until the entire chess board was covered.

There are 64 squares on a chess board. When you double the number of grains of rice thirty two
times, half a chess board, you have about one acres worth of rice . . . no big deal. However, when
you cross over onto the second half of the chess board, some seriously nasty business comes
down. The exponential rise from square 32 to 33 is dramatic, the rise from 33 to 34 even more
traumatic, and it gets worse from there. To fill the entire board with rice requires
18,446,744,073,709,551,615 grains. If a grain is counted out every second, it would take 584
billion years to count them all. The age of planet Earth is only 4.5 billion years. The story goes
that the emperor lost his kingdom, or the inventor lost his head. Either way, the consequences are
severe.

We have lived through thirty two doublings of computer power. We are passing from the 32nd to
the 33rd square on the chess board; seriously nasty business is about to disrupt everything we
hold perceptually dear. From here on out, the power of technology and the impact that this
technology will have on our lives will be increasingly dramatic. According to Microsoft founder
Bill Gates, in his book �The Road Ahead� we can expect at least 20 more doublings of
computer power.

We have crossed a line. On the side where we stand, everything is familiar, albeit a little uneasy
as we feel the impact of smart machines encroaching on our lives. But the dramactic and
unfamiliar lurks just around the corner, if not with the next doubling of computer power, then
with the one following. Some seriously unsettling business is afoot, at the very same time that we
face potentials for doing good and solving problems like never before in the human era. This
technological revolution is part of a history of change that impacts on cultures and on our
perception of space and of time. The theories of futurist Alvin Toffler best explain this
perspective.

Alvin Toffler speaks of waves of change. These powerful waves wash over civilizations and
transform the way human beings live and act. These waves result when there is an invention of
such magnitude that it overpowers old institutions and old customs. Toffler talks of three waves,
but we will speak of five.

The age of agricultural

For one million years human beings survived by hunting for food; by killing animals on the hunt
or by gathering plants. Much of the short human existence revolved around finding food. The
age of hunting and gathering was overrun by the invention of agriculture; the domestication of
plants and animals.

Each time an invention, like the domestication of plants and animals, washes over humanity,
profound changes occur in the perception of time and of space. These changes in perception
demand that new organizational structures evolve, and that human beings interact in new and
unusual ways.

In the age of the hunter, "home" was not a permanent idea, neither was the concept of land or
housing as property and wealth. The evolution of stationary communities, of towns and then
cities, happened because of the invention of agriculture. These are changes in the perception of
the use of space. Perceptions of time changed as well. The hunt followed the migration of the
herd. In the age of agriculture, time was ruled by the seasons and the length of the day. Not only
did the use of space and time change, but the speed of life accelerated, leadership shifted, old
power structures were replaced by the newly empowered. Old definitions and old institutions
collapsed and new ones took their place. This is the scenario that occurs as each wave of change
slams into traditional cultures.

The age of agriculture lasted six thousand years. Herein lies another trend. Each significant wave
of change is washing over human cultures at a faster and faster rate. The hunter gather stage
lasted one million years, the agricultural age six thousand, the industrial age three hundred, the
age of technology forty years (some say it is over now), the biotechnology/genetics era is
looming huge on the horizon, and behind it, towering above all the others, is the age of the
microelectromechanical system, the nanotechnology wave. The trend here is unnervingly
obvious; the waves are washing in faster and faster.
Not only are the waves coming faster, but the pace of life in each era is also accelerating. The
slow seasonal life of the farmer gave way to the frantic pace of the industrial age. In the age of
technology it seems we have to run to stay in place.

The industrial Age

The industrial age overturned the traditions and institutions of the agricultural era with a
vengence. To understand the scope of the changes, it is helpful to see what happened when the
industrial age overwhelmed the agricultural era. We can then use the knowledge of what
happened to help us predict and understand the changes coming as we switch from the industrial
era to a technology age (the age of smart machines).

What do the following concepts have in common?

�job� �nuclear family� �classroom� �publishing� �high school�

�graduation� �grade levels� �department stores (departments)�

�nine to five� �special education� �student� �textbook� �office�

�school subjects: math class, english class, etc.� �author�

These concepts are all inventions of the industrial age. They reflect new ways we think about,
perceive, and act in space and through time. They are about new institutions like schools and
corporations. They are about power shifts and changes in the concept of wealth and wisdom.

The agricultural age defined wealth as land and property. Little changed from generation to
generation. You looked to the past as a guide to the future. Grandfather and grandmother were
the sages. The family farm was the focal point of everyday life. Values revolved around the
church and the family. The rhythm of life was determined by the seasons and the natural life
cycle of living creatures.

Wealth in the industrial age was based on capital goods made from raw materials. Those who
owned and manipulated the raw materials and their products gained power and affluence. The
future was defined by the present; lessons from the past were of little use in the new age. The old
extended family structure was destroyed; the nuclear family was invented.

The concept of the "job" was also invented by the industrial age. It pulled the children off the
farms to the cities where they had to adjust to new spatial and temporal rules. A job required an
employee to be at a certain place for a set amount of time, to do repetitive tasks, to "work" at
producing things that were not immediately relevant to the individuals life. In exchange for the
loss of the agricultural life style, employers gave steady wages (not affected by the weather or
the natural rhythms).

The industrial age saw the creation of vacations, health insurance, and sick days; all resulting
from the invention of the job (a new way to work). This change was traumatic for a farm based,
agricultural culture, and many resisted. Human beings no longer were "ruled" by their natural
rhythms or by the seasons. Respect for the wisdom of the elders of the society declined as their
power was by passed; they no longer controlled the source of wealth, and their knowledge was
irrelevant to the new age.

The age of Technology

The rules are again changing in this age of technology. The life cycle of a business is now only
seven years. The cycle in new technologies is down to six months, and in the software business,
if a company is to survive, it must bring new products to market within two to three months.
There is hardly time to plan; certainly the present is of little help.

The technology age looks to the future to decide what needs to be done. A hockey analogy is
often used to describe this. Businesses, professions, and individuals must predict where the
hockey puck is going. Making plans based on where the hockey puck is now, is a sure strategy
for failure. If we don't make good predictions and act on them quickly, when we get to the future,
the future won't be there. The world is changing so fast it has come down to this: we literally
have to invent our future.

Wealth in the technology age is linked to knowledge. The rich and powerful of our era will be
those who find ways to turn raw data (information) into usable knowledge. This generation needs
creative, inventive, imaginative people. Technology is not just a collection of fun toys, a
playground for nerds, it is livelihood, wealth, and well-being. Just as the concept of the "job" was
an industrial age concept, there is evolving a new entity. The concept of "job" is dying as the
industrial age is fading.

The age of technology brought the world an entirely new kind of space; something never before
encountered. We call it cyberspace, a world where reality is virtual. Word processing works with
virtual paper (the laws of the paper universe have changed). Virtual books are being created as
we speak. Using virtual reality, 3-D technology over the World Wide Web, we can navigate our
avatars (graphic symbols representing our virtual selves) through virtual worlds (the multimedia,
3-D "book"). These virtual worlds need not pay the slightest attention to the laws of nature. You
may walk through walls, float through the air, walk in and out of time periods, or twist and shake
the fabric of space and time. Cause and effect disappear if you like; the ego is reduced to a point
of view. Just as we use clip art to cut and paste together our creations, we will soon have the
ability to clip virtual universes and paste them together to invent our own virtual worlds.
The concept of a computer as a keyboard, monitor, and central processing box, sitting on a desk,
is already a fading paradigm. Computers in the future will be invisible, built into the walls, into
our clothes, furniture, and appliances within a room. They will not generate images on a tiny
screen. They will provide voice feedback and/or they will generate 3-dimensional virtual objects
into rooms. Images will be generated in windows or will be any size required, from match box to
full wall displays. The television and the radio will be cannibalized by the computer and the
central medium of the new age will be the Internet.

Another way to think about cyberrooms is as simulation spaces. They will evolve first as games.
Later, education and special education will use classrooms as simulated environments. Mobility
specialists will be able to expose rural blind children to subway platforms and crowded city
streets. Urban blind students will travel on country paths. Blind children in the third world will
have virtual reality mobility specialists visit there rooms as needed.

This is where we stand today, in the middle of a technology revolution, driven by Moore's Law.
The industrial age is dying and all the institutions that supported it are undergoing change or they
are dying as well. Our perception of space, time, wealth, and power are in flux. We are in the
middle of having to create the future. This takes us back to the key idea expressed in the title of
this section: The Need for New Institutions.

No one knows what these new organizations will look like, but we can make some educated
guesses, and we can show why the old institutions are not up to the task. We know that industrial
age institutions are too slow to keep up with the pace of technology. We know that they are too
heavy with administration and bureaucratic tradition. We know that these old institutions are
modeled after factories, and the old concepts of space (the four walls of a classroom) and time
(nine to five). And we suspect that old patterns of competition and territory are obsolete in the
new age.

Here is an educated guess about the structure of technology age institutions. They are first and
foremost organizations that foster communities. They are in partnership with individuals and
other organizations, all of whom have a central focus. They are task specific entities. There is a
diagnostic and prescriptive component, a training component, a research component, and a
leadership and marketing component.

The new institutions are dynamic structures, with the capacity to change, realign, and refocus as
the world evolves. Their existence is inticately interwoven in cyberspace. They use the tools of
technology. They continually retool. The staff of the new institution is defined by the tasks they
address, not by the label of their profession or by their company title. The institution is funded by
the new wealth, knowledge management.
If we wish to bring new leadership to the problem of blind navigation, we must create a new
institution that follows the guidelines outlined in the paragraph above. This begins under the
umbrella of a foundation; a non-profit center, and it evolves into an independent entity that
supports itself by managing knowledge.

The age of Biotechnology/genetics

The Nanotechnology Age

The step beyond 3-dimensional projection is form generation. 3-D images will be given
substance in special machines that replicate shapes (like thermoform maps). Blind children will
be able to explore environmental concepts from the comfort of their classrooms (exploring
virtual fire hydrants, traffic lights, Rodan statues, tree leaves and cat whiskers).

If all this sounds like wild science fiction, remember Moore's Law, and the movement to the
33rd square of the chessboard (weird things are about to happen). Remember too that holograms,
virtual game machines, and 3-D television are realities now. We are not too far away from the
holideck of the Star Trek Enterprise.

The Needs that the New Institution would Address

A new institution that is relevant in the age of technology, and which focuses on electronic
navigational tools for the blind, must address four needs:

1. It must show that navigational technologies are needed. Blind travelers are very effective
using $25 canes and using native sensory abilities, like auditory and kinesthetic skills. It must
also show that these tools are inexpensive enough and small enough to be acceptable to blind
consumers.

2. It must show that the time is unique for a new institution to evolve. There is a history of
electronic travel aid inventions. There are boxes filled with inventions that did not live up to their
hype. Why is this time and why are these tools special. It must be demonstrated that there is a
need for this generation of tools.

3. It must show that there is a need for prescribable tools. Not every blind traveler has the same
set of problems and needs. New technologies need to be adapatable, they must evolve with
Moore's Law. The new institution must show how this need will be fulfilled.

It may seem to go without saying that blind individuals, children in particular, need to be trained
to acquire navigational skills. This howeveris an assumption that lay populations may not
understand. We need therefore to make this case first before we address the three needs listed
above.
The Challenge of Blind Travel

Blindness can result from damage at any time in the life cycle of human beings. To understand
the severe impact that blindness has on blind navigation, it is helpful to look at the
developmental cycle, from birth to old age.

The Young Blind Child: Navigation From Infancy Through Elementary School

Genetic and developmental anomalies can cause blindness before birth. Congenitally blind
infants are immediately faced with a loss of motivation to move through space. Vision is the
primary sense that motivates an infant to hold the head up and to search the environment. Colors,
movements, and patterns draw the interest of the sighted infant and result in the desire to move.

Response to the sight of a human face is hard wired in the brain. When a parent is urging a child
to crawl or walk, it is partly the parent�s face and partly the parent�s gesturing motions that
encourage the very young child. The parent�s voice alone lacks the motivational power that
vision provides.

Even before a very young child begins to walk, a tremendous amount of information about the
world is gathered. The child combines sensory inputs and associates these with objects and
people. If a sighted child spots a toy, the child reaches, grasps, and brings the toy to them for
examination. This examination is multisensory; a combination of oral, tactual, olfactory, visual,
and auditory exploration. This examination of objects leads to an understanding of the attributes
in the environment which are constant and reliable. A neural representation is established in the
brain of the repeatable patterns that give the world stability. Very early exploration is tactual, but
for the older child exploration and learning is visual.

A child�s ability to navigate freely is not just about independence and self sufficiency, it is also
about brain development and the evolution of intelligence. The sensory exploration of the infant
leads to percepts, which combine into concepts, which develop into cognitive abilities. Human
beings must move and explore to develop the foundation for intelligence.

Physical development is also tied to a child�s mobility. The nonsymmetrical tonic neck reflex
of the human infant causes the head and eyes to go up and outward when the infant pushes
against the floor with the hands. The arms stiffen, the head goes up, the child�s eyes gaze
forward, and the child becomes motivated to move toward what he or she sees. When there is no
vision, the head droops back down. This head down position can become a habit that stretches
the neck muscles, and if not behaviorally corrected results in blind adults who move through the
world and address others with the face pointing to the floor.
There is also a neurological connection between the peripheral retina of the eyes and the
cerebellum in the brain. The cerebellum is responsible for the smooth gait pattern that human
beings exhibit. If the problem of blind navigation is not addressed at the earliest possible age
(and worked on throughout the young years) blind children may not develop a smooth
�sighted� gait, and may instead develop a blind gait that is often mis-interpreted as the
walking pattern of a mentally or physically impaired individual.

Sighted children learn the gesture language of their culture, the facial expressions, eye movement
patterns, body postures, and the hand and arm signals that make up the world of non-verbal,
visual communication. These sighted children also watch and mimic the gait patterns of adults,
the swing of the arms, the heel to toe walk, the head-up posture, the straight ahead, rhythmic
flow of the �normal� moving human being. When a blind child cannot model the �normal�
walking gait, they develop a slow, waddling walking pattern that is inefficient, unsafe, and which
tends toward circular movement. In other words, not being able to mimic a normal gait pattern
can result in poor navigational skills.

The navigational function of the vision system goes into full operation when a child first stands
and attains the ability to walk. Human beings effortlessly move through space primarily because
the vision system is superbly adapted for navigation. The peripheral processing area of the retina
continually monitors optical flow (movement). It sends data to the parietal lobe on the right side
of the brain where spatial relationships are mapped and remembered.

At a glance, the vision system can register the position of objects in a spatial area, and map
routes to or around objects. Human beings have the ability to quickly determine the position of
an object in space, and point to it. Sighted people have the ability to estimate how far away an
object is, and they can estimate how far two objects are from each other. Vision instantly
calculates whether objects are nearer or farther, higher or lower, more to one side or the other,
and the system can figure how fast an object is approaching or receding. The central processing
area of the retina additionally can determine size, length, depth, color, patterns, and texture. This
entire sophisticated system is ready to go when a sighted child takes the first step.

Blindness, the absence of this sophisticated vision system, is a state where there is a paucity of
information about the world. Blind students must spend more time exploring space and
examining objects to arrive at the same spatial understanding as their sighted peers. To interact
with the environment (to reach for objects, walk around obstacles, pass through open doors, etc.)
the sighted individual uses a viewpoint-dependent representation of the world. From any
position, and after each change in position, the sighted person instantly sees how the world has
been repositioned, how objects have changed in relationship to movement. Blind individuals do
not have an instantaneous viewpoint-dependent representation of the world. Blind students must
build mental maps of layouts and of routes, and make future projections along the route based on
non-visual memories. Blind students have to learn how to explore, and they have to spend more
time actively researching their environment. A blind child�s first step is the beginning of a
journey of exploration that will last a life time.

As children grow older, the spaces that they master become larger and more complex. Sighted
children achieve this mastery so easily that the magnitude of the accomplishment usually goes
unnoticed. The sighted child�s visual perceptual system is built from the everyday, all the time
(and seemingly random) visual scanning of the environment. The blind child does not possess
this scanning tool. As blind children grow older, the move into increasingly complex spaces can
become overwhelming. Unless an early tactual/auditory strategy for exploring and understanding
simple spaces has been successful, the move to more complicated space can be unproductive.
The untrained blind child will become increasingly dependent and incapable as they grow older
and as the environment becomes more challenging.

By the time a blind child reaches elementary school, or in the early school years, the child must
have a set of preliminary skills upon which to establish sophisticated travel abilities. The blind
child must understand how to travel in a straight line, and know how to make 90 degree turns.
The child must know how to remain still and not bounce around so that their position in space
remains stable. They must understand left from right, front from back, up from down, and they
must understand many positional and environmental concepts. The blind child must know how to
move the body in relationship to landmarks and must understand how landmarks are used to
travel routes. By these early years the child, if they are to become successful blind navigators,
must be able to discriminate and localize environmental signals, mostly from sound sources.
Kinesthetic memory is a special kind of movement-related perception that can only be
established and refined through practice. Kinesthetic memory is recall for time and distance
traveled; it is neurologically imbedded as muscles are moved. When all of these capabilities are
honed, the blind child is ready for concentrated and more complex orientation and mobility
lessons (the advanced skills needed to navigate as an adult).

Throughout the elementary and middle school years, the blind child must explore complex
indoor environments, houses, schools, churches, stores, malls, banks, etc. The goal is to
understand environmental concepts, that all places have floors, ceilings, walls, doors, windows,
shelves, hall or aisle ways, etc. The goal is also to learn specific layouts, that grocery stores,
malls, departments stores, and every other variety of structure has a planned organization that
can be generalized to the same kind of store in another location (a supermarket in New York City
is very like another supermarket in Atlanta). The student must also learn that although there are
layouts that can be generalized, locations are also individual, like no other place. These concepts
can only be truly learned through a great deal of directed practice (or self-familiarization for the
older student).

As children get older, they need to learn outdoor environmental concepts. They need to
experience streets, curbs, sidewalks, driveways, walkways, porches, yards, buildings, etc. They
need to learn that outdoor layouts follow the same pattern as indoor layouts, ie. that they are
planned, and that generalizations can be made from one location to the next, but that every
outdoor location is also like no other. All of this knowledge must be painstakingly assembled
through practice and first hand experience.

High School and the Young Blind Adult

Many diseases and genetic patterns do not manifest until early adulthood. The incidence of
adventitious blindness also increases as the human development cycle unfolds. What this means
is that many blind individuals do not face navigational challenges until adulthood. These people
do not have the benefit of navigational training during childhood. On the positive side, the
adventitiously blinded individual has many years of visual experience and knows firsthand about
positional and environmental concepts.

By the time a student leaves high school they should be able to form complex mental maps. They
should be able to visualize movement through mental spaces and project the need for turns and
for positioning their body to locate objectives. Young adults should be able to travel in
unfamiliar locations successfully, and they should have a workable strategy for self-
familiarization within novel environments. They should also be able to create and maintain a
complex, computerized record keeping system relevant to environments, spatial layouts, and
routes. They should also be able to cross the most complex intersections, and travel in the
complicated atmosphere of any big city. The young accomplished blind traveler should also be
able to travel on any form of public transportation, and be able to negotiate complex airports and
depots. If the young adult is to be successful in the adult world of the sighted, they will have to
be capable in all these sophisticated tasks.

It is at the level of the young adult that the tools and strategies of traditional orientation and
mobility begin to break down; to be less helpful. At this time in history, the age of intelligent
machines (Kurzweil reference), there is great promise for new tools and new strategies.

Early navigational training, no matter how complete and expert, cannot address all environments
and all circumstances. The sophisticated blind traveler will face challenges that require tools and
strategies beyond the scope of typical orientation and mobility lessons. A multi-layered set of
navigational technologies are evolving that substitute for vision and/or that aid in navigation. The
sophisticated blind traveler must keep abreast of these technologies. They should become expert
in the use of new tools and adapt to improvements every one to two years; the current pace of
technological change. This ideal is hindered by the lack of an overall policy and infrastructure
for developing these technologies and making them available.

Many advanced orientation and mobility lessons, those designed for the competent high school
student, challenge the blind traveler to explore never before visited destinations. To be successful
at this sophisticated task requires a high degree of preparation and planning. It requires the
student to communicate with officials, to do data research, to keep organized and complete
records, to overcome fears, and to make backup plans to insure safety should anything go wrong.
It can involve using non-professionals to help with familiarization. The more a student moves
into and conquers unknown spaces, the more the student becomes confident and accomplished.

The Blind Adult in the Work place

The navigational ability of any worker is taken for granted. The same rule applies to the blind
individual. Navigation must be automatic and reliable. If a person needs assistance to get from
one place to another, they are less likely to be hired for a responsible position. It also (maybe
incorrectly) suggests that an individual who cannot move about independently might also be
incapable in many other areas. It is not enough, however that a blind person be capable in an
indoor environment. During the working years, it is expected that a blind employee be able to
negotiate multiple airports and cities, familiar or not. The blind traveler must also look normal,
have a normal gait and address others with appropriate eye contact and body posture. These are
skills that must be in place if successful employment is to occur. Since technologies evolve very
rapidly, it is also an expectation in the work place that the blind traveler will keep informed
about emerging technologies, and master those that are needed to do the job adequately
(including navigational technologies).

If the working blind adult has a family and children, there is the added responsibility of child
care and family maintenance. Now the blind individual must not only be concerned with
personal navigation, but must be responsible for the whereabouts of children.

Navigation and the Older Adult

The fastest growing and largest population of blind individuals are elderly. This is because
human beings are living longer, and because vision lose is a �normal� result of the aging
process. There is also a huge economic concern. Blind seniors become dependent and are
institutionalized at a faster rate than sighted peers. Training aimed at increasing independence
can keep these elderly blind people from entering nursing homes. There is also an
understandable depression that happens when vision is lost after a life time of sight. Navigational
training for the blind senior can mean the return of confidence, a sharp reduction in the cost of
care, and can return the individual to a productive place in the culture. Depressed, dependent
individuals often do not live as long as independent people who have a good quality of life. The
elderly blind have years of experience and can be valuable contributors in the culture.
Independent navigation can enable the elderly blind person to continue to contribute.

Summary
Throughout the human life span, blindness, and particularly the inability to freely navigate,
disrupts independence. This leads to decreased competence, economic dependence, depression,
even failure of cognitive abilities to develop. Early and on-going training in orientation and
mobility can have the opposite results; independence replaces dependence, jobs replace
dependency, confidence and feelings of self worth replace depression and incompetence.
Cognitive skills flourish rather than diminish. There is absolutely no doubt that navigational
training is necessary and benevolent. Early tools and strategies open the doors for these benefits.
New navigational technologies promise further development in the cognitive, self-sufficiency,
and culturally productive domains. This trend will develop faster and reach more people if there
exists a champion for these technologies.

Impact of Additional Impairments on Blind Navigation

The individual who is totally blind and who has no other impairments is a rare person. For an
individual to become totally blind there usually must occur a tremendous impact on the human
brain. Most often there is additional physical, sensory, cognitive, or emotional damage, and very
often there is a combination of impairments. Deaf blind syndromes can be associated with
physical neurological deterioration. Cerebral palsies have associated visual field loses and
oculomotor damage that makes gathering information about the world very difficult. In some
cases, individuals have damage to navigational centers in the brain, where their eyes appear
healthy, but their ability to use vision to navigate is similar to the restrictions experienced by
totally blind persons.

There is a direct connection between an individual�s ability to navigate independently and the
number and severity of additional impairments. Since most blind individuals have additional
impairments, the problem of independent navigation is even more severe than it first appears. It
is hard enough to navigate when only blindness has to be circumvented, but add additional
impairments and the task becomes immense.

Varieties of Navigational Aids

Navigational aids can be divided into three general categories:

1. Current and historically established navigational strategies. These include �independent�

travel (using human sensory abilities with no other aids); use of a sighted guide; use of the long
cane; and use of dog guides.

2. Precursor inventions, early research and development. These are the first generation electronic
travel aids (ETAs) like the Mowat Sensor, Sonic Glasses, the Pathsounder, and the Laser Cane.
3. State of the Art navigation technologies. The development of navigation aids took diverse
approaches. Some researchers concentrated on developing a visual prosthesis or vision
substitution system. The KASPA system developed by Leslie Kay in New Zealand falls in this
category. KASPA uses sound wave propagation to mimic the operation of vision. A second
category is pattern recognition (machine vision) . These devices are on the threshold of
development. Early character recognition systems like those developed by Kurzweil for print
recognition will be modified to interpret and report real time movement. Global positioning
systems offer a third development. These systems report orientation (position) anywhere on
earth. A fourth research approach addresses vision enhancement systems that digitally magnify
images. Night vision technologies fit in this category. A fifth avenue for navigational research is
in the area of environmental manipulation. These are the talking signs and audible traffic signals
that many communities are installing to help blind travelers.

Current and Historically Established Navigational Strategies

Compared to emerging navigational technologies these four approaches have several advantages.
They are relatively inexpensive, easy to learn and refine, involve very little maintenance, and
they work in most weather conditions. These four approaches account for the strategies used by
most all blind travelers in the world, and they are historically practical and successful.

The four travel strategies share common features that put them at a disadvantage compared to
emerging technologies. All are low resolution approaches. Low resolution aids may give
information about the location of objects, but they cannot name or label unfamiliar objects or
concept classes, and they cannot consistently detect movement. These strategies also work best
in near space and become progressively less useful for probing and analyzing intermediate and
distance spaces. They allow for reasonably high levels of independence in familiar environments,
but become decreasingly unreliable as environments become more unfamiliar, complex and/or
dangerous. These approaches do not bring the blind travel closer to the normal perceptual tools
available to the average sighted traveler.

Travel without the benefit of a navigational tool

Individual human beings can use the sophisticated abilities of their own sensory and motor
systems to navigate without help from others, without dog guides, and without navigational
technologies. Probably since the first case of blindness, individuals clapped their hands, whistled,
made clicking noises with their mouths, slapped their feet on the ground, or banged objects to
generate sounds that could be used for echo location; human generated sonar. These same
individuals could trail walls, fences, hedge rows, or grass lines. Using memory for layouts and
routes, taking lines of direction from parallel or perpendicular surfaces, and creating their own
landmarks that labeled locations, blind travelers could do very well with no additional help. One
of the main responsibilities of the mobility teacher is to help blind students realize and hone
these innate skills. Unaided travel works well in familiar, safe environments. It is not the best
technique for exploring novel spaces, being both unsafe and haphazard. As an orientation tool, it
is quite excellent and often very adequate for the daily challenges of blind travel. For more
sophisticated travel and for higher resolution and reliability, more complex navigational aids are
required. Very few blind travelers rely solely on their own sensory systems for navigation.
Usually travelers have additional tools for use in more challenging environments.

Using a Sighted Guide

Few of us travel alone all the time. When we can, we take along a friend or relative on our trips
to the grocery store, mall, and around our communities. An approach called the �Sighted Guide
Technique� was worked out many years ago, and has stood the test of time, needing few
refinements. The sighted guide technique is easy to teach and easy to use, and it is a very
effective tool for traveling through space. For ease of use, cost, resolution, safety and
effectiveness, it is hard to beat. The benefits of using a sighted guide increase if the blind traveler
continues to personally monitor the environment and maintains orientation vigilance.

The greatest drawback to the sighted guide technique is that it is not a tool for independent
travel. It requires that another human being be present as a substitute vision and navigation
system. The control of sensory input is not personal; the blind traveler is not directing the sweep
and focus of sensory information gathering.

The Long Cane

Few tools for independent travel are as successful as the long cane. Used in conjunction with
normal sensory monitoring (and often with a sighted guide), the long cane allows for travel in
both familiar and unfamiliar areas. It is cheap, light, portable, requires little maintenance, and it
is easy to learn to use. It is a Swiss army knife tool, having many uses beyond the obvious ones
of detecting objects in a path or picking up drop-offs. It can be used as an echo location tool, a
sensory probe, to identify blind travelers at street crossings, and it aids with orientation when
used in familiar areas.

The primary disadvantage of the long cane is it�s limited resolution. It is a near space tool and it
does not identify spatial position, or objects. It does not move the blind traveler closer to the
abilities offered by sight.

The Dog Guide

Many blind travelers prefer a dog guide rather than the long cane as their primary navigation
tool. Sophisticated navigation technologies cannot compete with the companionship (love,
devotion, warmth) offered by dog guides. Although not as reliable as a sighted guide who can
provide voice feedback and who has a cognitive understanding of spatial layouts, the dog guide
is a reliable, ever ready tool for travel. The resolution of the dog team is better than for the cane,
and the degree of independence improves.

Dog guides have a few disadvantages. There is cost for dog care and maintenance, and there is a
responsibility for taking care of the dog�s needs and welfare. Like the other tools in this
category, dog guides do not enhance the blind travelers sensory skills. There is still a reliance on
�outside� support.

First Generation Electronic Travel Aids

A generation of sophisticated navigation instruments are emerging. These hold great promise for
high resolution, highly accurate orientation, and increased independence. Prior to the emergence
of these new technologies, a first generation of navigation tools, called electronic travel aids,
were available for several years with varying degrees of success. These early tools include the
Nottingham Obstacle Detector, the Trisensor, the Laser Cane, Mowat Sensor, the Lindsey
Russell Pathsounder, the Sonic Guide, Sensory 6, the Polaron, and others.

Early electronic travel aids offered a valuable alternative or addition to the traditional navigation
tools used by blind individuals. They provided higher resolution than other tools, and brought
blind travelers rudimentary instruments with capabilities closer to that of the human vision
system.

Electronic travel aids came at the beginning of the age of intelligent machines. They were too
expensive, too raw, unreliable in poor weather, and they did not always live up to their hype.

State of the Art Navigational Technologies

Most of the early navigation strategies used by blind travelers (sighted guide, the long cane, and
dog guides) are elegantly simple, inexpensive, and effective. Each has advantages that make the
approaches enduring. There are times when walking with a sighted guide is the best solution for
the needs at hand. The long cane has stood the test of time; blind travelers use their canes with
very high levels of proficiency and satisfaction. Dog guide users are notoriously (and rightfully)
proud of the schools where they were trained. For these blind travelers, the dog guide is a
wonderful and very effective means of navigation. But all of these devices require degrees of
dependence and all have limitations. New navigational technologies hold the promise of
increased independence, and they bring the abilities of the blind traveler closer to that of their
sighted peers.

To understand the significance of this next generation of navigational technologies, we need to

take a thorough look at our time, and especially the age of the intelligent machine.
The Search for the Holy Grail

The age of the intelligent machine will give us small, inexpensive, and smart appliances. For the
blind traveler, there will be navigational appliances that will be affordable, adaptable, and in
obtrusive. These navigational tools will be personalized, prescribed appliances, designed to
satisfy individual tastes as well as needs. For each individual, there will be a personalized Holy
Grail. Let's examine what it might look like and what it could do. For the fun of it will make a
chicken soup device, tossing in every ingredient on the marketing horizon.

First of all, of course, the tool will be part of the clothing, unseen, but probably not unheard.
Where it is will be up to the individual. More than likely, the navigational tool will be in all parts
of the clothing, from the shoes, to the belt buckle, to the head band (and more). The device will
be linked to the internet, to a powerful server computer specifically tailored to the blind traveler.

it will talk; it will listen; it will be a global positioning system, it will link to signage; it will be a
KASPA and Pathsounder system; it will have face recognition; it will have real time video
analysis; it will be 360 degrees; the resolution will be tunable, it will have obstacle avoidance
radar; related to sensory expansion devices designed for the sighted public (enhanced electronic
vision and hearing); it will have night scope ability

Notes:

Historical development of all mobility aids (dog, cane, SG, ETA); limitations of each. Show that
development has been sporadic and developed for specific age groups, no centralized leadership,
no effort to coordinate agencies, etc.......

1. The sighted child�s visual perceptual system is built from the everyday, all the time visual
scanning of the environment. �The theory of neuronal group selection provides a compelling
etc. see Leslie Kay�s notes. A blind child must be taught to use new navigational technologies
and must log many hours of practice before substitute neuro-perceptual pathways can be laid
down in the brain. New technologies require expert training and guided practice.

2. It is ironic that just as the revolution in technology is about to present us with aids that will
improve navigation, the number one champion of this technology Nottingham University, has
dropped the mobility program.

3. We have reached a time when we will be able to prescribe technologies for navigation
depending upon age, need, and type and degree of impairment (visual or otherwise).

4. In some cases we need to prescribe sensory enhancement (augmented) magnification, night

vision, wider field of vision; in other cases we need vision substitution: identification of objects
or people, take over the role of vision for avoiding obstacles, determining safety, improving
movement efficiency. The two obviously overlap.

5. Long term studies conducted by Leslie Kay, show that blind children using KASPA can gain
knowledge about their surroundings through the natural act of �looking� at things using bio-
acoustic technology. Sufficient spatial detail seems to be made available by the auditory
information from KASPA to class it ads a �vision Prosthesis� which encourages locomotor
exploratory behavior.

6. The search for a visual prosthesis has lasted 30 years (Leslie Kay).

7. Remember that inventors and innovators like Leslie Kay and Bill Love are retired and in their
seventies. These individuals are the intellectual and emotional champions for keeping these
technological approaches alive. They know the rationale and they know the history. That is one
reason why we need a non-profit foundation; to keep these visions alive.

8. Reasons we need the non-profit institute:

There is no structure (organized way) to: fund research; evaluate research; repair and purchase
technologies; plan for generational development and deployment (keep pace with Moore's law);
merge or unify technologies into prescribable navigational appliances; and there is no way to
rally, market or articulate (ie. there is no "global" leadership)

9. The institute would: do assessment of need, and prescribe individualized navigational tools; do
field research; study the effect of the tools on children during different developmental stages and
under differing amounts of secondary handicapping conditions; develop and improve upon
present navigational aids; raise funds for inventors; search for the Holy Grail Research
References and Notes

1984
Pelli and Seno
Institute for Sensory Research at Syracuse University
Studied how visual restrictions limit the ability to traverse a maze. They found that the visual
requirements for this task are very low; substantial restrictions can be tolerated before
performance is affected (10 degree fields, contrast reduction by more than a factor of ten, spatial
frequency of less than i cycle per degree). These findings indicate that very little spatial
information is required for obstacle avoidance; most people with low vision can perform obstacle
avoidance.

1982
Marron and Bailey
showed tha visual field and contrast sensitivity are better predictors of performance on O&M
tasks than acuity.

1984 Pelli and Pelli- retina Foundation in Boston; vision enhancement