From the intro to a story in the Houston Chronicle:Eva Smith’s seeing-eye dog, Bixby, didn’t understand all the stopping and starting. While Smith stood on the sidewalk, adjusting her headset, the yellow Lab began to whine.
“Sh, sh, sh,” she said, patting his head.
Bixby is great for spotting cracks in the sidewalk and keeping Smith out of the path of oncoming cars, but he can’t find a Starbucks. On Thursday, Smith was trying out a gadget that can: one of a new line of GPS devices meant to help people with visual impairments get around better. The devices can plot a walking course to the ubiquitous coffee shop, among other “points of interest,” and give spoken directions. It’s the same technology that has been available to drivers for years, but it’s still in its infancy as a tool for the blind.
“This is great,” said Smith, a 35-year-old Houstonian who has been blind since birth and tried the GPS device Thursday for the first time. “Just knowing where I am — being able to get somewhere without asking a lot of people for directions.”
Smith started her tour at The Lighthouse of Houston, a nonprofit center dedicated to helping the visually impaired, and made her way down West Dallas. A guide plotted a path to the nearby Gotham Lofts, across from the Backstreet Cafe on Shepherd. The system wasn’t perfect.
“Turn left on TX minus 261,” the computerized voice announced when Smith approached Shepherd, which is listed on a map as TX-261.
To a novice, the voice was nearly unintelligible, but Smith had no trouble understanding. It’s the same robotic text-to-speech voice her own computer uses, so she’s used to it.
She beamed when the guide, a representative from one of two companies that manufacture the talking GPS devices, mentioned that maps exist for nearly every country, so a blind person could conceivably find her way around Singapore
unaided.
Smith, who recently took a cruise with her family, could have used the help on walking tours in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands.
The group of people with visual impairments who gathered at The Lighthouse on Thursday agreed that Houston’s streets had to be among the most difficult in the world to navigate blind. Without a grid, many streets curve or simply disappear, so you can start on one and end up on another without ever realizing it.
“It’s a mess of streets, and they go every which way,” said Bernice Klepac.
Klepac has found herself lost a few times when she’s taken new walking paths around her Rice-area home. She’ll call out for help, but some people pretend they don’t hear her.
Others will try to help, but don’t speak English well or just don’t give good directions. Then all she can do is keep walking until she finds familiar ground.
The 73-year-old isn’t daunted: Walking a mile a day has kept her in robust health, and she doesn’t want to stay cooped up inside.
“There are a lot of sounds outside, and smells,” she said. “You meet a lot of people.”In the GPS systems, she sees the potential to stride confidently in unfamiliar directions.
