San Francisco, California
June 27, 1995
1.0 Summary
2.0 List of Speakers in Order of Appearance
3.0 Introduction -- John Brabyn, Ph.D.
3.1 Arthur Jampolsky, M.D.
3.2 John Brabyn, Ph.D.
4.0 Overview of Talking Signs Concept
4.1 Billie Louise Bentzen, Ph.D.
5.0 Synopsis of Recent Progress
5.1 Sign Placement -- Theresa Postello
5.2 Training -- Linda Myers
5.3 Engineering -- William Crandall, Ph.D.
5.4 Talking Signs: Recent Research -- Billie Louise Bentzen, Ph.D.
6.0 Consumer Reports on Talking Signs Experience
6.1 William Gerrey
6.2 Mike Cole
6.3 Jerry Kuns
6.4 Question and Discussion Period
7.0 Report from Department of Parking and Traffic, San Francisco
7.1 Bond M. Yee, P.E.
8.0 Experience of the San Francisco Municipal Railway
Annette Williams
9.0 Report from Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART)
Ron Brooks
10.0 Report on Participation by the Blind Services Community (Rose Resnick Lighthouse)
Anita Baldwin
11.0 Remote Signage Plans in Europe
11.1 Ronald Stephens, Ph.D.
11.2 Peter Barker
11.3 Question and Discussion Period
12.0 Future Plans of Talking Signs, Inc.
12.1 C. Ward Bond
12.2 Discussion Period
12.2.1 William Crandall. Ph.D.
12.2.2 C. Ward Bond
12.2.3 Bob Planthold
13.0 Attendees
On June 27, 1995, Smith-Kettlewell hosted the second annual symposium on the current status of Talking Signs® research, development, needs and deployment. Forty-five members of the community represented the interests of consumers, user agencies, governmental agencies, researchers, and regulators. The seventeen speaker provided a unique perspective of the impact that Talking Signs is having on the constituency which they are associated.
John Brabyn, Ph.D. Director, Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center (Moderator) The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute San Francisco, California Arthur Jampolsky, M.D. Founder and Co-Executive Director The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute San Francisco, California Billie Louise Bentzen, Ph.D. President, Accessible Designs for the Blind and Boston College Department of Psychology Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts Theresa Postello Mobility and Wayfinding Consultant San Francisco, CA. Linda Myers Mobility and Wayfinding Consultant San Francisco, CA. William Crandall, Ph.D. Talking Signs Project Manager The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute William Gerrey Rehabilitation Engineer The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute Mike Cole Director, Orientation Center For the Blind Albany, CA. Jerry Kuns Customer/Sales Liaison HumanWare, Inc. Bond Yee Bureau Chief, Traffic City and County of San Francisco Annette Williams Manager, Accessible Services San Francisco Municipal Railway Ron Brooks Access Planning Department Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Anita Baldwin Executive Director Rose Resnick Lighthouse For the Blind, San Francisco Ronald Stephens, Ph.D. Project Director OPEN Project, University of Portsmouth, England Peter Barker, Ph.D. Royal National Institute For the Blind, London, England C. Ward Bond President, Talking Signs, Inc. Baton Rouge, LA. Bob Planthold Accessibility Community Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART)
Welcome, everybody. It's great to be doing our Third Annual Talking Signs Symposium. I'll have a few more words to say in a minute, but first I would like to introduce Dr. Arthur Jampolsky, who is the founder and Co-Executive Director of this institute.
This is a tremendous day for Smith-Kettlewell. This is an independent, private research organization in the medical center, which is non-university affiliated. We're very proud of that because there are many advantages and disadvantages to being a part of a university, which this used to be--but there are mostly advantages to not being a member of a university complex. There is an old saying I once heard that "in the business world, it's 'dog eat dog' and in university academia it's just the opposite." People are here at Smith-Kettlewell because they want to be. We have people here who have achieved just about every national office of importance in basic research and clinical research. The signature of this organization is "bottoms up." People are responsible for their own activities--they put in their own grants. Smith-Kettlewell has a fair endowment, where we have seed funds for such things as "Talking Signs."
There are many other things for which seed funds are given by Smith-Kettlewell to their own researchers. Many times national organizations lag behind by a few years--sometimes 5 or 10 years--and it's not until things get off the ground that the feasibility is shown, that the national research organizations, of which we are very proud to be a member, catch up with frontiers of practical application. And it is the practical application--the one foot in the laboratory, and the one foot in the practical applied science, whether it is medical, as in this area--that wins.
I see Bill Gerrey smiling in the back there. Bill, how long have you been at Smith-Kettlewell now? Twenty-three and a half years. That means that Bill is very good, or we are very tolerant, I am not sure. Bill has been a very key person in our research in this area, and also John who is Director of the NIDRR, National Institute of Rehabilitation Research RERC, which is about 25 or 35 percent of our activities. I want to welcome you all. We knew this area was good several years ago. How many years ago now John? About a dozen. With Ward Bond, Bill Crandall, and a whole team of others, things have really taken off. We realize there are people from all over the world here, and we certainly welcome you to this symposium. I am sure it's going to be a huge success.
Thank you. Really, the purpose of this symposium is to bring together the various players in the Talking Signs and the remote signage family--all the different players who are needed to get a project like this out of the laboratory and into the real world. Here today we have representatives from BART and Muni, the city, the State Transportation Department and various other agencies who either have or are interested in installing Talking Signs. We also have orientation and mobility specialists and blind consumers who will relate their experiences with Talking Signs, and we have various researchers who will relate to us the news from the Talking Signs scene. We are also extremely fortunate to have some guests from Europe who can share their experiences and proposed plans for similar kinds of remote signage for blind individuals in Europe. So we would like to start off this symposium by giving you an overview of the Talking Signs concept for those of you who are not intimately familiar with it already. For this purpose I would like to hand the platform over to Dr. Beezy Bentzen.
Talking Signs are for people who are print disabled, that is, not only people with visual impairments, but people who for whatever reason may not be able to take advantage of information provided by print signs--information such as labels and directions. For instance, signs that would name a street or provide the name of a business, identify that there is an information kiosk here, or tell you what trains come on which side of the transit platform. Or directional information--a sign with an arrow on it, directing you which way to go to the trains.
The Talking Signs system adds to the mobility aids and skills that a traveler already has--additional information. It doesn't substitute for the aids and skills of a visually impaired traveler, aids like a long cane, or a dog guide, or for good spatial reasoning. But it does give independence. Each time I as a sighted person would use a sign, a blind traveler to get the same information needs to find someone to ask. This may be easy, there may be a person readily available who has the right answer and is able to convey it in meaningful terms. Often there is no one available, or there may be someone available who does not respond, or who does not speak your language, or who tells you "it's over there," or who is rude, or simply gives wrong information.
The Talking Signs system has the potential to greatly increase the independence of blind travelers. The system is comprised of an infrared transmitter and a hand-held receiver which contains a speaker. Infrared technology is inherently directional and when a receiver is oriented in the direction of a transmitter, a spoken message is heard from the receiver. The receiver can also be used with an earpiece to make this a totally private listening system. I would like now to show you a very brief video which shows the use of a Talking Signs system in the Powell Street station in San Francisco.
(A video showing Talking Signs in action in the Powell Street BART/Muni station was shown.)
I'd like to make just a couple of quick announcements before we proceed with the rest of the program. Firstly, we are going to be producing a proceedings of this event; and secondly, on your chairs you'll find pads which you can use to write down questions which you may pass up to the front. Then during the question period they will be addressed. This will help reduce the overlap. Also if there is not enough time, the questions can be answered later by mail. As a result of this annual meeting last year, the BAITS (Bay Area Intermodal Talking Signs) project was kicked off. Things have really snowballed since last year. The Washington D. C. Metro is seriously interested in installing Talking Signs throughout the system, distributing 5000 receivers free to users. That's just one of many examples of projects being implemented now or coming up as a result of the efforts of many of you folks here. In this symposium we would like to keep the momentum going and the ball rolling.
Now to give you some reports on the progress and state of the art of Talking Signs we have a number of experts here today. First, I would like to call on Theresa Postello, a mobility and wayfinding consultant, who has worked with us very closely on the Talking Signs project. She is going to tell us a little about what is involved in the installation of the Talking Signs transmitters in the different installations.
Good morning, everyone. I am a university-trained and California credentialed Orientation and Mobility Specialist. Linda Myers and I have joined forces to do business as mobility and wayfinding consultants. We determined the placement or location of Talking Signs transmitters and the wording or message of each sign to facilitate an effective, safe, and accurate path of travel for people who are blind or visually impaired. In other words, we figured out where the signs go and what they say.
As Beezy stated earlier, we as sighted people look around, see signs, and choose a path of travel. People who are blind or print handicapped need access to signage so they, too, can independently maintain their orientation and find their way, effectively navigating within the environment. The procedure for determining the placement begins with a preliminary assessment of the site. We may do an initial walk-through of the site--that is, if it is already constructed. The main library was not finished when we first started working on that, nor was the children's playground at Yerba Buena Gardens in place. We secondly acquire and review floor plans of the site. Based on this preliminary assessment, three things occur. We prepare a proposal or planning document to look at the number of hours that are involved in the project. We locate the Talking Signs transmitters on the floor plans to determine wiring and conduit that may be needed on the electrician's part. And finally we prepare a written script which includes performance specifications for each Talking Signs transmitter. These specifications include the location, message, range, and dispersion of the sign. The dispersion means the angle of light coming from the point of the cone. I think we will get into some of the technical stuff later. The range means the distance the light travels from the source. Determining the placement may or may not be a complex process.
There are two types of signs, as Beezy stated. The first is the sign that labels an object or destination. Those are straightforward and the easiest signs to place. The second type of sign is directional--for instance, "hallway to rooms 200 to 209." It's our job to make sure that the person gets to that hallway and to that room and not to room 100. Those signs are a little bit more challenging. There are two aspects to always keep in mind regarding the placement. The first is that the Talking Signs transmitter placement does not necessarily correspond to the location of a visual sign. The second is that infrared light works in line of sight so it does not travel around corners and through objects.
We've started to develop guidelines for the placement of the Talking Signs transmitters based upon our studies of how blind people travel. We've suggested heights for wall-mounted transmitters and where ceiling mounted transmitters might be located. We've dealt with doors, elevators, stairs, ramps, telephones and drinking fountains. We've also developed recommendations for writing messages. We have found that the shorter the message, the better it is; and accuracy from every point where the sign can be picked up is extremely important. After the installation, we participate in calibration and fine tuning the system, and we conduct the field test of the system with user group volunteers. Thank you.
The Talking Signs system is really very easy to use. Research has indicated that independent blind travelers can actually learn to use the system by reading written instructions. But those who use direct instruction are more proficient in the use of Talking Signs. As little as 5 to 15 minutes of structured training enables the blind person to actually travel simple routes in unfamiliar locations. Those who begin with just a short training period can go out and use the system and improve their skills on their own, or if you have a more lengthy instruction in the beginning then there is less to learn as you go out and use the system on your own.
The concept of using the signs is very simple. The users search with a hand-held receiver and then walk in the direction in which they are pointing the receiver. Talking Signs has an eight-page brochure called "Getting Acquainted with Talking Signs." It outlines some general information such as how to search, facing the center of the signal while walking to the signal, and what to do when you lose a signal. It also has 15 hints for beginning users. A more extensive training guide was written which serves as a comprehensive reference for use by those who are teaching others to use the Talking Signs system. The guide covers all the training techniques and strategies that have been helpful in training adults, children, and people with multiple disabilities. The guide has a comprehensive introduction equivalent to Talking Signs 101 including suggestions for selecting training areas and how to mount and adjust portable transmitters. Then it breaks down the task of using the Talking Signs system in a variety of different settings into eight different lessons and ends with a set of six cards which can be used as an outline for a new teacher. Some of you know how to use the Talking Signs system but for those of you who don't, let me briefly give you some hints that may be helpful when you go down to the Powell Street station later today or to the Department of Public Works. This is a Talking Signs receiver. The message comes in through the sensor aperture in the front, so you don't want to cover that. This is the "On" button. Right behind it is the speaker and the battery compartment. It also has a neck strap. What you want to do is to hold the receiver level--you don't point it at the ceiling or floor because the signs are usually about 10 feet high and you are looking around.
Transmitter1: "Talking Signs speak for themselves ... "
Transmitter2: "Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute ... "
What you're going to do is to search. Search until you lose the signal on the left, and lose it on the right, and then find the center. That's where the transmitter is. Then face that direction and walk toward it. As you walk toward it, you're going to leave the button on so that you can confirm that, yes, you are going toward the sign or toward the transmitter. That's basically it. It is very simple. Thank you.
The engineer's responsibility on the team is to ensure that Talking Signs installation provides the most effective, efficient, and safe system possible. The engineer is to interface with orientation and mobility experts such as Linda and Beezy and Theresa. Between the developers and manufacturers of the technology and the system installers, the engineer has the classic role of being the link between application and theory. The engineers have the responsibility of understanding the problem to be solved, recognizing the potential technological solutions which might be brought to bear. I always had mixed feelings of pride and panic when Linda says "can we just have the message picked up from the hallway but not the entrance?" Or when Ward asked if the diodes can be in a smaller box with a certain plastic so it will be completely unobtrusive.
Here are two examples of actual problems which we have identified at our Powell Street installation and suggestions and solutions which will make the point. At one location, the range of a sign extended to a place where it is actually irrelevant. The engineer knew that a blank sign, i.e., one which had a signal but no message would essentially block or jam the offending signal. The second example, is that at several places at the Powell Street station large columns block the messages from being heard at every position in that station. The fix is to have two signs synchronized to the same transmitter, located at least one column width apart, so that one sign will always be in view of the receiver. Those are a few of the things that we've identified from the Powell Street demonstration and evaluation project. That shows how important these real world evaluations are because we can do everything in the laboratory trying to imagine every conceivable condition which we might come up against, but it takes a situation like the real world test to validate and help us improve the system. Our research studies from Smith-Kettlewell, in collaboration with Linda, Beezy and Theresa have given us a tremendous advantage in being able to move quickly ahead to have a device, technology, and system which solves a real problem--a high demand problem. We are fortunate to have been able to come to a very good solution to that problem.
The Talking Signs system is comprised of small infrared transmitters which are typically installed above head height, above or adjacent to landmarks such as entrances, public telephones, or places of information or assistance. Transmitters may stand alone and ontain their own microphone for recording. Alternatively, 10 transmitter cards may be in a central system, with light arrays incorporated into other fixtures.
Messages such as "Powell Station," "Exit to Market Street," "Public telephone," or "Stairs and escalators to all trains," are heard by users from speakers in small hand-held receivers, when the receivers are oriented in the general direction of transmitters. Because infrared transmission is inherently directional, users approach labeled landmarks by simply proceeding in the direction from which they obtain a clear, loud signal. There is no need for users to remember a series of verbal directions.
Talking Signs transmitters provide additional information to print handicapped travelers. They do not substitute for the use of a travel aid such as a long cane or dog guide, or for good spatial reasoning.
Talking Signs (infrared) Compared with Verbal Landmark (inductive loop). The superiority of remote infrared signage (Talking Signs) over an inductive loop system (Verbal Landmark) was demonstrated in research involving 129 visually impaired participants at the convention of the American Council of the Blind in San Francisco, July 1993 (Bentzen & Mitchell, 1995). Both types of signage were provided by the respective vendors on the first two floors of the San Francisco Airport Marriott Hotel. Participants traveled pre-determined routes using either of the signage systems, and no additional wayfinding assistance. Routes were traveled faster and more directly using the Talking signs system than using the inductive loop system. In addition, participants were able to successfully complete significantly more routes using the Talking Signs system. Both observation of participants and results of a structured post-experimental survey indicated that the directional nature of the infrared system made it much easier to use than the non-directional inductive loop system.
Talking Signs on a University Campus. Travel on a campus (San Francisco State University) using the Talking Signs system was compared with travel based on verbal directions in research supported by the National Easter Seal Research Program (Crandall, Bentzen, Rosen & Mitchell, 1994). Sixteen persons who were totally blind or who had no more vision than the ability to tell the direction of a bright light, and who traveled with the aid of a long cane, attempted to travel six routes using either the Talking Signs system or verbal instructions read aloud by an experimenter. Participants successfully reached their destinations significantly more times using the Talking Signs system than using verbal directions alone. Given the difficulty and sometimes impossibility of obtaining accurate verbal directions, independent travel for blind persons in an unfamiliar campus environment is considerably enhanced by the availability of a Talking Signs system.
Talking Signs in a Complex Transit Facility. The San Francisco Municipal Railway (Muni) and Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) participated in a project involving the installation of 93 Talking Signs transmitters in Powell Station, a tri-level station in downtown San Francisco, and the evaluation of the usefulness of this Talking Signs system to travelers who are visually impaired (Crandall, Bentzen, Myers & Mitchell, 1995). The research was supported in part by Project ACTION (Federal Transit Administration).
This study evaluated the usefulness of the Talking signs system as a wayfinding technology in a complex pedestrian environment where the conventional way of getting wayfinding information is through verbal assistance from other travelers. Such information is useful if it is accurate, concise, and understandable. However, an ideal source for this information is often unavailable. Furthermore, it is known that, in general, travelers least prefer getting information from other travelers (Battelle, 1976). Persons having impaired vision may particularly have safety concerns about approaching a stranger for assistance.
The 36 participants in this project were divided into three groups of 12 for testing. Each group received a different amount of training. The most highly trained group received one to two hours of training, until they reached a predetermined criterion of successful independent travel on six practice routes in one end of the station. The next training level was 15 to 30 minutes, or until two practice routes were completed with verbal assistance only. Prior to coming to Powell Station for testing, participants in the minimally trained group received verbal instructions in their preferred reading medium, a receiver, and a pseudo-transmitter which provided a beeping signal instead of a message. They were encouraged to study the instructions and to practice the skills described.
All groups were tested for one hour on their ability to travel routes of increasing complexity in the station. Easy routes required the use of two transmitters which could always be located, when needed, by scanning with the receiver. Medium routes required the use of three transmitters, and traveling a short distance when there was no relevant transmitter to provide direct guidance. Hard routes required the use of five to seven transmitters, were considerably longer than medium routes, and required longer travel distances between transmitters. As an example of one hard route, participants were positioned on the Muni platform. They were told "You've just arrived on a Muni train headed downtown. Using the stairs or escalator, exit Muni. Then enter BART and go to the main boarding area for a BART train to Richmond." In order to complete this route, they needed first to locate the stairs or escalator which would take them to out of the Muni system. They could scan to find a sign which said "Stairs and escalator up to concourse level." At the top of the stairs or escalator they needed to find a way to exit the Muni system. One of several signs in this vicinity said "Muni faregates." They then needed to locate a faregate through which they could enter the BART system. One sign in the vicinity, but some distance away, said "BART faregate." After negotiating this faregate, they needed to find out how to get to the BART platform. By scanning, they were able to find a sign saying "Stairs and escalator down to all BART trains." At the bottom of the stairs or escalator, they could scan to find a sign saying "Main boarding area for Concord, Fremont and Richmond further down this platform." Continuing down this side of the platform, they eventually came to a sign saying "Main boarding area for Concord, Fremont and Richmond."
Participants completed 169 of 196 attempted routes (86.2%) with no assistance. Differences in amount of training did not significantly affect route completion, although results were in the expected direction. Participants having no individual training did not demonstrate as high a level of proficiency in using the Talking Signs system as participants in the other two groups.
Participants were very enthusiastic about the benefits of increased independence, confidence, and decreased stress they experienced in this transit facility having Talking Signs transmitters. Several participants particularly remarked about their pleasure in being able to glance around with their receivers and discover alternative routes and features of the transit station such as telephones, an automated teller machine, and a number of shops which were located along the concourse. They particularly liked being able to discover independently which side of a platform to wait on, and where the main boarding area on each side of each platform was located.
One participant remarked that in Powell Station he was "truly equal" to sighted travelers.
Manuals for installers and trainers are under this project (Crandall, Bentzen & Myers, 1995; Bentzen, Myers & Crandall, 1995).
Talking Signs for Surface Transit. Muni participated in an additional project, supported in part by Project ACTION, in which Talking Signs transmitters were installed on bus stops and on busses. In the absence of Talking Signs transitters, there are two primary ways which blind travelers use to find unfamiliar bus stops. The first is to ask another pedestrian, if one can be found, and the second is to laboriously look from one end of a block to the other, bearing in mind that stops may, or may not be at the beginning, middle or end of a block, have shelters, may or may not be marked by a pole, and shelters may be along either the curb side or a building line away from the curb. The 18 participants in this project readily located bus stops of various types and locations using the Talking Signs system. Talking Signs messages containing the name of the transit operator, and the numbers, names and destination of busses using each stop could be picked up by users about 50 feet before they reached the stop. Thus, users had advance information that they were heading in the correct direction.
Participants also located particular busses lined up along a curb. In the absence of Talking signs transmitters, travelers who are blind rely on bus drivers and other passengers to identify busses for them. Using the Talking Signs system, participants readily located the doors to particular busses, without any wayfinding assistance other than that provided by Talking Signs messages. Talking Signs transmitters were placed in the front and side sign cavities of Muni busses, and contained the number and name of each bus as well as its destination.
Participants in a focus group enthusiastically endorsed the use of the Talking signs system in surface transit, with such comments as: "With Talking Signs I don't need to walk the whole block to know whether I'm going toward the stop;" and "I'm not in danger of missing my bus while trying to get information from the driver of the wrong bus."
Now I think you want to hear from people who actually participated in the project and who are actually experienced in using the Talking Signs system.
References Battelle Memorial Institute, Human Affairs Research Center & Ilium Associates, Inc. (1976). Transit user information aids: An evaluation of consumer attitudes. U.S. Department of Transportation, Urban Mass Transportation Administration, Washington, D.C.
Bentzen, B.L., Myers, L. & Crandall, W. (1995). Talking Signs system: A guide for trainers. Project ACTION, National Easter Seal Society.
Bentzen, B.L. & Mitchell, P.A. (1995). Audible signage as a wayfinding aid: Comparison of Verbal Landmarks and Talking Signs . Accepted for publication in Journal of Visual Impairment and Blindness.
Crandall, W., Bentzen, B.L., Rosen, S. & Mitchell, P.A., (1994). Infrared remote signage for the blind and print handicapped: An orientation and mobility study. Final report to National Easter Seal Society Research Program.
Crandall, W., Bentzen, B.L., Myers, L. & Mitchell, P.A. (1995). Transit accessibility improvement through Talking Signs infrared remote signage: A demonstration and evaluation. Final report to US Department of Transportation, Federal Transit Administration and Project ACTION of the National Easter Seal Society.
Now we come to the part of the program where we will hear from various users of the Talking Signs and hear some of their perspectives on the system and its usefulness and their experiences with it. First I'd like to introduce Bill Gerrey. Bill has been involved with Talking Signs since the beginning. There are various stories on how Talking Signs got started--one of which has to do with Bill Gerrey falling into a pothole on Sutter Street one night and losing his cane and didn't know where he was. I remember walking down there with Al Alden trying to find Bill's cane. That is one of the instances where the idea of Talking Signs came from.
We had a wonderful fellow working here named Bill Loughborough who was working on infrared beacons. I can tell you that the actual invention of Talking Signs was in a restaurant. We were at the long working surface along one side there, and at that laboratory it was invented, it was a restaurant called "Don't Call it Frisco!" Now it is a Mexican restaurant. But my opening line was supposed to be "I got lost one night." The yarn of this horrible ordeal that lead to the invention of Talking Signs is apocryphal, but the fact was that I was lost, lost for 4 hours in the dead of night having surrendered my stick to a construction site as John mentioned. For the life of me, I could not find the little alley that I lived on. I had gotten on the wrong side of the street or in the opposite direction or something. But the end of it was that I got one key bit of information. There was a fellow weeping in a telephone booth and a very scary guy next to the phone booth who I asked and he was really creepy. When he told me where I was I ran straight home. But my frustration turned to terror when I was safe in bed and I was thinking of my vulnerability.
Could this one incident have been the invention of Talking Signs? No. Because all I had to do then was to think about the guy who shoved me when I asked for directions, or when I was in the Louisville Airport looking for a gate and asked a flower-bearing person if he might show me where the gate was. He told me he was here to ask for contributions, not to help. I responded in anger, you know? All those times I spent looking for invisible telephones. My friend Marie and I were looking for a taxi and we ended up getting in a car which was not a taxi. A car which could have had a Talking Sign on top of it saying "taxi," but we were in what turned out to be a police car, and the guy wouldn't talk! We got pretty scared by that. I suppose for sighted people or people-watchers especially, when you're looking for help, how many people would you pass before you found somebody suitable to ask. I have to ask anybody I hear, and that puts me in a much riskier position. Well, the technology exists now for blind people to have a safer and easier time of it. Thank you.
So how many of you wore ties today? Well, we must be a long-suffering lot, I've always thought, as blind folks, else why would we be arguing this simple utility of providing a system which tells you which bus is which. It does seem kind of basic doesn't it? The access that Talking Signs provides is basic access--the kind of access that sighted folks completely expect.
The story of blind folks and independent travel is a positive one. We have done pretty well at it, with all the vicissitudes that Bill has talked about. But I am going to ask you to work a little with me here and imagine some situations. The topic is surface transit, which Beezy touched upon, but I am going to give you some examples. I want you to think of this as a "before Talking Signs" and "after Talking Signs" kind of game.
Situation Number 1: You're in San Jose, and oftentimes in big suburban sprawl situations, buses drift by in the middle lane while you stand on the curb. Now think about that one, before and after Talking Signs. You have to flag down a bus in San Jose many times. Hmmm, sounds tricky.
Or take a different situation--the El Cerrito Plaza BART station. This is a public transit station which acts as a terminal for many bus routes. They come in, they park, the driver shuts off the motor, closes the door and goes and refreshes themselves. At least that's what they say they are doing. It could be 11 o'clock at night. Sure, the bus stops are labeled, but if you are new to that area and don't know which one the 72 is at, you've got to find out, and they don't always park at their regular spot either. Sounds tricky huh? Talking Signs would fix that problem. They go day and night.
Or take 4th and Heatherington, in San Rafael. For those of you from England there is such a place, really, there is. That is a feeding frenzy of buses, if you can imagine that. They double park and they come in, and people are disgorged and people get on. There is no end of action there. And blind folks make it--they survive, they take the bus. Who knows how many buses they miss, but they manage. They manage through extraordinary effort. Effort that no one else is asked to make. Or take a completely different situation. It's got a lot of buses in it--the East Bay Terminal. This is the place where a lot of buses come to go across the bay. Either north or east or to get on down towards San Jose. At the East Bay Terminal, it's true that all the buses have assigned spaces, but multiple operators and multiple bus companies come in there. There are multiple lanes on which to find buses. And on each lane there are dozens of routes represent by poles at which people queue up. They get very territorial when you bust to the front of the line if this is the F bus to Berkeley. You could walk along until you find your bus zone and get in line with everyone else, if you had Talking Signs.
Now a completely different situation exists at San Francisco State. The southbound Muni buses don't stop at any particular place. They stop all over the place. And the way you do it is that when you hear a bus, you step out between parked cars and walk out into the street, and have this loud conversation, assuming the driver talks to you, with somebody who has opened the door. And you say""are you the 28?!" and they say "what?!" and you say "are you the 28?!" and they say "No, I am the BART bus!" and you say "OK." And you get back on the curb and hope to catch the next one.
And light rail--in light rail I include BART, Muni, the San Jose light rail and the Sacramento light rail. Destinations are still not announced when those light rails show up. And the different cars can have different destinations. So getting on the front car could mean you go to the zoo, getting on the second car may mean you go to City College. Very interesting. Talking Signs would solve that access problem, too, by the way.
Take taxi stands or take shuttle bus zones at airports. Wow! They are usually on islands, out in the middle of horrendous racket and noise. In Los Angeles, there is probably a dozen shuttle bus companies, not to mention regular transit companies that all stop at specific spaces.
And if you ask indoors, the volunteers at the what do you call them, Sisters of Mercy, or something, "where do I catch super shuttle," they will say "under the blue sign." Then there are specific vans that you have to catch from time to time, like for hotels and that kind of thing.
There is curb-to-curb surface transportation as provided by paratransit and all those fixed route providers who have to provide extra routes for people with severe disabilities and you can't necessarily find those either. They are a flag-you-down kind of situation also. Talking Signs would help that problem. There really is no argument. In all these examples, the ability to identify buses and stops at some distance changes our access fundamentally, like speech with the computer screen, like a ramp for someone who uses a wheel chair, like closed captioning makes TV accessible (for the deaf). So what's there to discuss.
For those of you who are new to Talking Signs and haven't thought a heck of a lot about it, when you get off of a BART train--an underground subway train--the first thing you do is make a decision, it's one of those 50 - 50 decisions. Do I go right and find the escalator or do I go left and find the phone? Or do I go right and find everything or do I go left and find nothing because I am way down at one end of the platform? You would have a rough idea if you took note where you were relative to the length of the train when you got on, but that's not always an easy thing to know. Besides, the stations are all different. So Talking Signs makes possible the initial 50 - 50 decision. You get off the train and look to the right and it says "Escalator to Hallidie Plaza and Powell Street." Hmmm. You look to the left and it says "Public Telephones." You can begin your exiting of the station knowing which way to go. That is very neat! Usually we get off and just flip a coin and take off, and either people start grabbing you and pulling you toward their favorite stairway or you end up into some kind of negotiation with folks. Or you walk into these crazy mushroom-concrete things that they have that tell you that, oops, this is probably not the right way. And that is if you are a sophisticated user of the system. Now let's say that you've made the proper decision and you want to take a Muni train because you want to continue your travel in San Francisco. Well, these BART stations are quite large. Eventually you might hear other things which indicate the Muni system. They have a different turnstile sound. They have a different ambiance, in general. But just heading in that direction is very handy.
In deference to the research data that shows that we continue to use the signs even once the system is familiar to us, we at least have the choice of whether to use it or not. In fact, one of the beauties of using Talking Signs in any situation is that you always have that choice. If you know your way and you are involved in a great conversation and you don't have any need for it, leave it in your pocket. You don't need it. If, on the other hand, you want to try something new, like a different exit, OK, you have been going to visit the American Foundation for the Blind at Pine Street. That's one exit, but if you want to go over to Embarcadero 3 to see the blind artists' exhibit that the Lighthouse is sponsoring, you want to exit over by the Hyatt Regency at the Embarcadero station. Now, by the way, the Embarcadero doesn't have Talking Signs yet, but someday it will and that choice saves you blocks of walking if you make the choice within the station. Which stairway you choose determines whether or not this is going to be an efficient trip for you. So Talking Signs has helped me in a lot of ways. You heard Beezy say that there were 185 trials and 92 signs. These signs indicate competely different entrances and exits--different aspects and features of the station environment. So even if you are a regular user of the system, there are often situations where you want to use something else or go somewhere else. A lot of us tend not to go Nordstrom because its just a pain in the neck. Maybe I'll do it some other time. Or maybe I'll go with somebody. But if you can actually get directions easily by simply looking around until you find them, then suddenly places become more welcoming and you are more likely to give it a try. There is a ripple effect from greater access, whether it is a curb ramp for somebody in a chair who now has the city as their oyster, or whether it is the simple information which heads you in the right direction or heads you to a specific destination. Thanks.
Welcome. It is a pleasure for me to be here and I hope it is instructive and informational for you. I, too, have a dream. My dream is that I can travel where I want, when I want, and how I want, independent of asking assistance from other people. In my capacity as a customer and sales liaison for HumanWare, an organization that provides adaptive computer technology for blind and visually impaired people, I travel nationwide. I travel nationwide almost on a daily basis and during the course of any given day I am on buses, in taxis, in vans, on airplanes, in boats, in hotels, in public facilities, commercial facilities, and in private facilities. I am in buildings and on streets. I am looking for telephones--not so often these days because I am carrying my own with me, thanks to modern technology. And I'll tell you something, I am shocked when I run into a Braille sign. It's the most amazing thing to run into a Braille sign. In fact, it's usually so accidental that I stop and read it. And they are in the most unlikely places. They can be at knee height, hip height, head height, shoulder height, around the corner from the object that I am looking; and I am not one to go feeling my way down the street, building to building, looking for somebody's address or store name. It's embarrassing, it's inefficient, and it's illogical.
What Talking Signs means to me is increased independence, freedom of choice, and greater dignity in my travel. Talking Signs are electronic curb cuts, they provide access for me as a blind person and print handicapped persons. Do you realize that one in five adults in the United States today is functionally illiterate? That's a tremendous commercial population which is grossly underserved by print signage. It's not just blind people who we make this technology available for, it's a very big portion of the adult population. And we aren't limited to the English speaking population. We can transmit Talking Signs information in any number of appropriate languages, depending on the setting. In my travels on a day-to-day basis, let me take you on a small trip with me to experience some of the small things that I have to grapple with on a moment-to-moment basis and sometimes on a longer-term basis. Nevertheless, I am faced with decision points throughout the day and believe me it is exhausting when one travels as much as I do. And when one has to sort out the number of problems which I sort on a day-to-day basis, it's probably going to age me much more rapidly and I don't think Theresa would like that.
When I leave my home, I am probably going to go to the airport and I probably take Super Shuttle or I take a taxi. That's a safe place to start from. Usually that's the only vehicle that pulls into the driveway, although I have been confused before when a neighbor turned around one morning. I guess she didn't like it when I started to pop into her car with my briefcase. Nevertheless, as the van comes to the area to pick me up, it is nice to know that it is the Super Shuttle or whatever van service I am using. And when I finally get to the airport it would be nice to know that it is the appropriate airline in front of which they are dropping me. Once I am out of the van, it would be nice to know which way the Sky Cab desk is. And in finding the Sky Cab check-in, it would be nice to not have to wait 20 or 30 minutes--I usually get to the airport about 30 minutes before flight time--for an escort to take me to the gate or the ticket counter. But airports being so massive and so complex, if I do get dropped off at the wrong door or even at the right door, once I am inside the terminal it takes a tremendous amount of energy just to get to the ticket counter alone, let alone the hallway to the gates that I might want to select. Maybe I am thirsty for a cup of coffee or need to stop at a restroom or maybe I want to find the red carpet club because I am an hour an a half early instead of 15 minutes. Maybe I need to use a public telephone along the way. Without asking one to ten people, none of that is accessible to me. I am not going to feel my way along the wall looking for a public telephone or trying to figure out if every doorway might lead me to the red carpet club. Or indeed, what gate I am approaching to get to the airplane when there are these massive open environments and no place to put a conveniently findable Braille sign.
Braille signs are obscure and in essence ridiculous for the blind traveler unless they are in contained very controlled environments such as hallways with room numbers. They don't really make any real sense when they are out in open environments. My wifeTheresa pointed out a sign on the wall about head height yesterday on the way into BART along a long flat wall, 15 feet away from anything that I would normally be using as a travel approach. And the sign was so dirty that after I wiped my hand on that, looking at what the sign was, I didn't want to touch her or anything for a long time. Also I have finally, through a variety of kind people, found my way to the airplane, traveled a long time, I am tired and am getting off at Chicago O'Hare. And oh dear! Where do I go? Where is baggage claim, especially baggage claim for United? Oh, I forgot, this time I am transferring to another plane in another concourse. I am thankful for someone to give me a lift, and believe me I am not going to do that independently, even with Talking Signs, with the limited time I have to change airplanes. But it sure is nice to know that this person who does speak English, who is escorting me along the way, is going in the right direction. If I had Talking Signs, I would be monitoring because I want to know that I am going in the right direction. And oh yeah! Let me stop and make a phone call. I need to call my colleagues so that they will meet me in St. Louis.
Well gosh, I finally got to the destination city, and I found my bags. Now I have to sort out, as Mike pointed out, the numerous approaches or departure points I can use to leave the airport to get to my downtown hotel. Oh dear! I am here. Where do I go now? I found the front door to the hotel because the van dropped me off here. But where is the registration desk? Where is the elevator? Where is the restaurant? Where is the bar? I am so thirsty. Where is my room?! Where is the exhibit area in which I am supposed to set up? The exhibit area is about a hundred acres big. Where is my booth? Where is my booth leader? Where is my booth with 2000 people in this room? I'll tell you the problems don't end on a moment-to-moment and day-to-day basis without signage. If I took down the signs in Heathrow Airport, all except for you English people, the rest of you would be lost. You would not know which way to go to the bathroom or to the Tube, or the baggage claim area, because Heathrow is a massive, congested place of confusion. That's all that we are demonstrating, that signs give us equal access. It's nice to walk along the street and know that I want to choose this restaurant as opposed to the one next door that I don't enjoy. It's nice to know that I want to be in the flower shop for a change and not the drug store. It is nice to know where the bus stop is and that it is on the near corner instead of the far corner and be able to find it without asking 3 or 5 people and putting myself at risk. Print handicapped people, even though they see the objects, may need the same kind of labeling or directional information. That constitutes a significant portion of our population. Is signage a right or a privilege? Thank you.
As probably most of you know, traffic engineers as a profession are very conservative, and whenever we are faced with a new technology, we kind of look for the trailing edge of the knife. This is one case where the technology is so wonderful and has so many applications that we don't feel uncomfortable at all to jump right onto the leading edge and stick our neck out on this. I think, from a traffic engineering side, Talking Signs has a wonderful application and has advantages over all the audible signals that are currently in use on the market, even the Nagoya system, which is probably the state of the art, where it chirps and cuckoos with different directions of travel.
I think in San Francisco we would have a very difficult process of application because of the unique nature of how some of the streets in San Francisco are laid out. For example, if you are familiar with San Francisco, you know that all the streets south of Market Street are not laid out in a north-south grid but in a diagonal grid so when the signal goes "cuckoo," you have a hard time determining whether you're hitting north-south or east-west. Another problem that we ran into with audible signals is the noise factor. The system is there 24 hours a day. You hear it whether you want to or not. We have had cases in the San Francisco State area where our audible signals were creating such a noise nuisance, especially in the evenings, that they actually turned them off with a timer in the evenings. Another advantage is the cost. Talking Signs typically run about $350 each. A typical signal light requires about eight of them and installation for a signal runs about $100,000, so Talking Signs actually represent a minuscule investment. It is our belief that this system will become even less expensive when they are mass produced and become more popular.
Currently, we have 14 installations out in the field. They are located at 5th and Market, and at Powell Street. They basically tell you, when it's activated, where you are, which direction you are facing, what is the cross street, and intermittently it also updates the status of the traffic signal, whether it is red, yellow or green, so that it helps the pedestrians cross.
One thing that I want to make clear is that we consider this system to be one which provides additional information for the blind and visually impaired. We don't consider this to be a traffic control device. We expect the users to continue to use the existing clues out on the street. I can see our friends from Caltrans are cringing when I mention that this is not a traffic control device. It provides additional orientation and information. It is not made to control the crossings. The reception that we have had of this system is very positive. In fact, we have another project coming up--we just got the funding--and we're going to put up a second system that will connect the Muni Metro Van Ness station with the Lighthouse for the Blind along Market Street (east side of Van Ness Avenue). And if that is successful, we'll fan off from there and maybe hook it up with the Main Library, City Hall and so forth. It's great.
I can't say enough about how great it has been to work with Smith-Kettlewell with Talking Signs. I'll talk a little later about just the collaboration--I think it has really brought the city together in terms of departments working together as well. We're really proud to be, in partnership with BART, the first transit facility in the world to have Talking Signs. Not too many people in the world would be able to say that. I think we are the only ones. That's really exciting, and what I think is even more exciting is the outcome of this first demonstration project. In a sense what Talking Signs and Smith-Kettlewell knew when they went into it, and the users who had some experience with it knew, was that this is really going to be wonderful; but to actually do it and have it come true is an even greater feat. I think what has been most crucial to me is to talk to people who have never had that kind of access before and hear what they have to say. I have talked to users who for 10 years have been through the Powell Street station, or since it was first opened which now has probably been about 15 years, and they found out things they had never seen before. They didn't know that they could get to Woolworth's from the Powell Street station.
The other thing that has come out of it, as I said earlier, is that we've been able to collaborate. We now not only have the Powell Street station but also two permanent stations at Stonestown and San Francisco State which are the first two above-ground stations which have Talking Signs. We are working with San Francisco State's Disabled Student Services department and the O & M department there that's doing the training and the Lighthouse for the Blind to help get people used to using that station. All of us working together along with Smith-Kettlewell have receivers available on a loan basis, so that at least people can use it for a period of time till they get familiar. Those stations are a lot simpler than the one at Powell Street. I am sure it would be wonderful if everyone had a receiver but we haven't gotten to that point yet--we're working toward that. I think that is one of the greatest challenges that we have ahead, in terms of making sure that there are receivers available for anybody who needs to use them. And hopefully, with Talking Signs getting more of a distribution, that will come true, and hopefully they will be able to get cheaper so that they are more affordable for people. I am really glad to hear from what you all are saying that WAMATA (Washington Area Metropolitan Transit Authority) is intending to buy a lot of receivers in Washington. We really are looking forward to expanding Talking Signs and are looking at it in terms of the other stations, especially in the Metro system. I was really pleased to see what Smith-Kettlewell and Beezy Bentzen and others were doing with our surface system signs. The challenge now is how we connect these signs with the destination signs and the buses, because in San Francisco there are about a hundred different destination signs and you need to be able to have the Talking Sign repeat the same information when you turn the destination sign to a new destination. I think that's a new hurdle we have ahead. And on new buses that is something that we should include as part of purchasing them. As Bond Yee said earlier, we are very excited to be on the forefront of this wave. I think it is a wave that is moving a lot faster than a year ago and hopefully it will continue to move faster.
I want to start out by acknowledging some people. When this project came to BART in September of 93, we sat down with Smith-Kettlewell and they said "what about doing this?" We had a lot of apprehension. I really think the thing that sold it for us was selling it to our community.
In August of 93 we were looking at how we were going to make our stations accessible. We had a couple of meetings with people who were visually impaired. And we had this really cool idea of Braille signs and a tactile path that would take you from the lead edge of the station, and you'd follow it with your feet and your cane and it would take you all the way through and down to the trains. Of course, that idea was limiting. It didn't make sense to mark the path to everything like the phones, the restrooms, snack bars and whatever you have in the stations because it would be too complicated and impossible. So the first acknowledgment is to the visually impaired community who told us absolutely not, no way, under any circumstances.
One of the worst community meetings I ever had was where they basically said it was impossible--don't even try. So we needed to look at another option. And Talking Signs just happened to come along and it seemed like the right thing to do. We didn't have to invest a terribly great amount and because of the cooperation from Smith-Kettlewell, Talking Signs and Muni, we were able to share the work. We really appreciate all of these people. Special thanks to some of the other people at BART--a lot of the departments that brought us together.
This is helping us to respond much better to a lot of other accessibility issues. I think that our experience during this demonstration project, much like that of Muni's, has been one of complete success. We not only have the people who went through the study and benefitted from it, but also from an operational stand point this technology worked for us. We put up Braille signs in our Powell Street station which I heard a complaint about today. But we haven't had any complaints about Talking Signs. We also haven't had any vandalism that I am aware of. That is another thing which we have had some problem with, with our Braille signage. The Braille signage we are required by ABA to have, and which we will continue to do, will help some people, particularly deaf and blind people. But the Talking Signs seems tohave much more applicability in that environment. From an operational standpoint we haven't had any problems. We've had a station agent who said that people probably thought that those were cameras so that crime was down. So they have some serendipities that we didn't count on.
I just want to close with some potential challenges. We would like to expand this, of course, but the biggest challenge facing us is funding, especially given that the ABA mandates us to do a whole bunch of things but they don't give us very much money to do them. So the first issue for us, given that this isn't a mandated project, is how to get funding in a funding-constrained world. Clearly the project worked. Now the question is, how do we get funding for it? The other thing is how do we get a way to get receivers into people's hands? I think Annette talked enough about that. We don't want to create a technology that people can't use because they don't have money. Finally, how do we install transmitters in outdoor environments? I would be interested in hearing about that. In most places there is some kind of electricity; many places it is not our electricity so we have to work with somebody. Especially in our surface stations it becomes more of a challenge as to how to put transmitters outdoors. I would be very interested in hearing about Yerba Buena and other outdoor projects so we can figure out how to solve that. If we can do that, then we can say that it is really an unqualified 100% unmitigated success.
Now that I am a video star, Tom and I are gonna have to do a sequel. I wanted to spend a couple of minutes talking about what I believe to be the role of rehab agencies like the Lighthouse in a project like Talking Signs. I think we have sort of been a background organization, if you will, but we have turned up everywhere in this process, because we see it as our job to do so. That began for me when I came to work for the Lighthouse in 1990.
Shortly after that, Bill Gerrey dragged me out to get what I thought was a cup of coffee, only to show me the one and only Talking Sign at the time on Powell Street. And it was the beginning, for me, of the understanding of a technology and a concept that I didn't know anything about till then.
Now it's not that those of us doing rehab don't trust the researchers, the engineers, and the academicians, but we decided at the Lighthouse to do our own peer review of the issue, which is why we have been involved all the way along since then. We have some focus groups at the agency. We've hosted some others--one Ron Brooks spoke of. We've shown people the Powell Street station. It's beginning to feel to me that no head of state in the blindness world bears coming into the city without being shown the Powell Street station by one of us. And the reason for that is that we really need to know--our agency needed to know--that this really was the technology of choice. To go forward with several technologies, and for us who have struggled with orientation and mobility for so many years to then be faced with several systems instead of just one, would defeat the purpose, instead of taking it forward.
Our work prompted the Lighthouse a few years ago to send a letter to the Department of Public Works saying, "This is the concept that we want to endorse. This is the product, we believe, that works." To take a stand like that is unusual for my agency. We felt it was critical to the ongoing process, so that we didn't go in a number of different directions. Right now about 46 or 47 percent of the Lighthouse staff are people with visual impairments and they're becoming ambassadors on their own. We can now have focus groups just over coffee in the morning--we don't have to invite anyone from the outside. And we really do believe it has strengthened our role as rehab specialists in offering another tool to a person's independence. It's also very nice that the agency is now located on Van Ness Avenue and we just happen to be on the pathway of the latest Talking Signs installation. Thank you.
Good morning. First, I would like remind myself that I first met John Brabyn and Beezy Bentzen around the first of February in chilly England. My first experience of San Francisco on Friday and Saturday was such that I felt it is a great city to be in, but now I think that I am back in England.
But seriously, as a direct result of an international conference in a pack-filled university, we've had the privilege of being invited by Talking Signs and Smith-Kettlewell and Ward Bond to attend this symposium and to really learn about your experiences here in the States. The experience was quite shattering because, unlike yourselves, we are still a theoretical organization. We haven't actually got an end product yet. We hope to by the first of September this year. We know what we would like to do, but we haven't done it yet. Why not use it here under the very expert tutelage of Beezy Bentzen? She challenged me to use the Talking Signs system--I think it was on Sunday evening. I duly took up the challenge and it was a very successful experiment. She was able to tell me where I ought to want to go and using Talking Signs I was able to get there. I didn't understand the structure of BART and the Muni underground systems but I found my way from one part of that organization to the other without any difficulty. I did this a) without my spectacles and b) with my eyes closed.
So I was, in effect, attempting to look at some of the difficulties that blind people have in traveling. It was a great success and a very good demonstration from my point of view. I think, as a representative of a European consortium that is developing a somewhat similar system, we can be heartened that you have shown that the technology can and does work. As John said, we in Europe do things in a consortium. We only get money if we think of acronyms. We only get money if we can work as a united team. We have to work with colleagues from different European countries so our consortium consists of experts from the Federation of the Blind in France, experts in blind user requirements from Belgium, the RNIB from England, and experts from Italy, but first of all we are working with the transport providers in London and in Paris. They are the industrial partners where the open system will be installed. The open system will be designed and built by experts and companies who have already produced infrared guidance systems--not for blind people, but they have used these infrared systems to help people find their environment at home. Environmental control systems are quite prevalent in the United Kingdom. So we've got a consortium which has a wide ranging experience. Like yourselves, we have a beacon system, or we will have a beacon system, but our beacons will be more like a video camera, rather than the type of beacon we've seen here at the Powell Street station. The beacons will not be isolated, as yours are at the moment. They will be networked. They will be linked to a central computer and this computer will in fact be responsible for monitoring the whole of the system. It will be looking at the status of the beacons, as to whether they are working properly. The computer will be capable of looking at the messages which are going to be sent to the beacons. If we need to change the beacons we will be doing it remotely from this central computer.
Because it's an international project, our beacons will be capable of putting out messages in all European languages. For our trials, we will be using four languages--English, French, Italian and Flemish. Now we've seen the message structure that you use here in the United States. We have to be very careful that we don't impose message structures on our French colleagues, or our Italian colleagues or our Flemish colleagues. So message lengths have to be different--they cannot be the same and they have to reflect cultural differences. The receivers that end users will be carrying will allow them to select the end language that they wish to listen to. A French person will be able to take their receiver from Paris, travel to London and still listen to the appropriate message in French. Likewise, an English person will be able to take their receiver to Belgium or Paris and be able to pick up the appropriate message as defined by the user organizations in those countries. We have to choose installation sites. The installation site in London will be South Kensington, for those of you who know London, because it's a reasonably complex station. There are platforms above ground and below ground, but equally it is a center where people leave the trains to visit the various museums in London. We will also be installing beacons in Heathrow 123, which is the major international terminal for air travel to and from London. In Paris we will be working in Chetelet station; and if anyone knows Paris, you know that it is probably the most complex station in the whole of Europe. In some respects, it mimics the kind of situation you have at Powell Street, where you have different organizations, different train services coming into the same environment. Our network system will link in to the various passenger information systems. And therefore our system will be transmitting timed messages for where the train is going to go, and where the train will be stopping, because in Paris not all trains stop at the same stations coming on the same line. So our system will be working in real time. What we have to do, of course, is to ensure compatibility. One of the reasons that we are here is to ensure that a traveler is not carrying around a wheelbarrow full of electronic goodies. It would be very nice if the system you have here was fully compatible--from a receiving point of view--with the system that we are going to be developing with the European commission.
And I believe we can achieve those objectives. I don't see any reason why we can't do that. We're talking about compatibility between America and Europe. We also have to have compatibility with different European systems. There is under development a GPS system which is almost finished, I believe. They are obviously going to produce a navigation system for surface travel; it's not going work in the metropolitan undergrounds of Europe where we're working. But, then again, the traveler will be carrying a receiver and, therefore, there is a great need for all of the producers and all of the researchers to look at the commonality between the systems and make sure that the people who want this technology actually get the best. And I think that's very important--to harmonize all of these systems.
I am not going to say very much more apart from introducing my colleague, Peter Barker from the RNIB, who is a real end user and it has been a great experience to travel with him. I have learned a lot from Peter and I am sure he is going to now put the various systems into critical perspective.
I am delighted to be here, not just because San Francisco is a wonderful place to visit and I haven't been here for 10 years, but because this is an opportunity to look at and discuss a very important issue indeed. One of the things that struck me is that although our two countries--the United Kingdom and the United States--are separated by 3000 miles of water and separated by a common language, we obviously have some common experiences. Now I don't want to swap anecdotes with you all day but I just want to talk about two things. The use of the tie, first of all, which seems to be part of our theme today--I found sometimes in London waiting at the side of the road to cross the street, somebody offers to help and I accept gratefully and I am grabbed like this ... I am led across the street by my tie. The second thing is that we introduced a little while ago--two or three years ago--what we call "deregulation of buses." This means that we have a wide choice in the supply and use of buses. A variety of people have introduced them--that is a very good thing and has perhaps improved the service--but we no longer have the very distinctive, double decker London bus, bright red, with the characteristic engine noise at the front and a door at the back. So the situation we have, as an earlier speaker said, you walk out between parked cars and you hold your hand up and the bus stops. And this happened to me: I opened the door and was about to ask the driver if this was the 28 bus and he said "No, it's not the bus, I am selling ice cream, what do you want?" So we have those sorts of problems.
Ron mentioned that I work for the Royal National Institute for the Blind, which I do. I also work for an organization called the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association. Those are two large organizations in the UK which about four years ago, recognized that very little is being done to help visually impaired people move around a little easier. So they got together and they formed what was called the Joint Mobility Unit. That coincided with me thinking that I had enough working in industry for 25 years or so, and I would like to do something slightly different. So I joined them and I now operate a department which has a very simple mission. We seek to improve the quality of the built environment to enable the blind, deaf-blind and partially sighted people to move around safely, independently and without undue restriction.
I think that Talking Signs stands fairly and squarely in the middle of that movement. I have had discussions with people here--Ward Bond, for example--over many months now about Talking Signs. I have in my office a couple of transmitters and a receiver which I use for demonstration purposes, and on occasion I have actually used them myself to help me around a little bit. But I welcomed enormously the opportunity to come here and see a realized situation in operation and that's what happened Sunday evening. Now I have written an analytical objective report about that because that is my job to do that. What I have not been able to set down in that report is what that experience really was. To me it was a really emotional experience, it enabled me to be independent in a totally foreign, strange environment with a minimum of instruction. I knew I had a lot of support there. Beezy was there and she was going to prevent me falling on the tracks. But she told me where to go--to head from oneend of the station to the other. I did not understand the difference between BART and Muni, and I did not understand the accent and some of the language that was coming over on the ... I am sorry, Bill, I think it was you. But it was successful, I got where I needed to go. Now to me, that is a tremendous value, you can't express it in terms of dollars and cents, pounds and pennies. I am concerned about how we get it, because it is so important we've got to do it right.
I think what we need in the United Kingdom and in Europe is a very professional, structured approach to introducing a system like this. We need what you might call a "comprehensive business plan." We have to be sure that we're not just doing this a bit here and a bit there because it seems the right thing to do. We've go to make sure that we've got a system that is 100 percent reliable. A system that has all of the backup facilities that you need. Installation, maintenance, training, the whole lot. And we have to do even more than that. We have to in some way or another create the demand. Making them feel that there are advantages and disadvantages to being independent. We have a number of routes of communication to do this and that has got to be a key part to our strategy in the United Kingdom. I know that the RNIB and the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association will play a key role in that. But it is not just simply a matter of finance. It is a matter of creating the demand because when people say to the transport operator, "Why can't I have this system?" That's when they will start to provide it. I think that's what we have to do with those who will be given the responsibility for installing the system. Transport providers, retailers, and many others must be made to understand that Talking Signs is actually good business. It is not a matter of putting something in that will help a few blind people, it's something that you install that enables you to get a handle on the purchasing power of those blind people. I mentioned that we've got a million in the UK at the moment, but that number is going to increase. We have an aging population and we know that many of the causes of vision loss are related to aging and that is running ahead of any success we might have of prevention. So the numbers are going to increase. Now there are people who are interested.
This is a report I received just before I set out for the United States. It's from an organization called Cross Rail. Cross Rail is a joint venture company set up two or three years ago with a view to installing a new rail link right through the center of London, running east to west. It will use existing surface rail lines, some existing underground rail lines and a lot of new lines, and new tunnels to be driven. There will be five stations underground and 23 stations above ground--a fairly big project. This report by one of their planning engineers is very "pro" the use of Talking Signs. So, hopefully, we're going to get somewhere with that.
The point made in this report that I want to make as well, is that Talking Signs, good as they are, Ward, are not the total answer to all the problems facing visually impaired people. Clearly, in many, many cases there are some things that we are going to add in the best way we can to existing environments. But they would be so much better in the future if they can be incorporated as an integral part of newly designed facilities. I think, in many cases, the Talking Sign will need support from other services--other provisions. Clearly, everybody here would appreciate that the Talking Sign is a secondary aid. You still need a mobility aid--a white cane or a guide dog. It is going to be many years before we dispose with either of those systems.
But it is a very good and very important wayfinding and navigational aid. It does need support from other services. I hope and feel that Ward may not be too pleased to hear this, but of course, if the environment is designed correctly with appropriate care and forethought, the need for signage is reduced. If there is a certain amount of logic to any environment then the need to tell people how to use that system is reduced. We're trying to put a lot of effort behind the development of a proper design approach within the built environment.
We've recently produced and published this book, The Building Site. It's the design manual of problems and solutions which incorporates the needs of visually impaired people in universal design. It is not a book that says, "This is how you design blind ghettos." It's a book that says, in any design, pick up some of the lessons here with the techniques set out here and you'll produce an environment that is better for all people. I can assure you that when this book comes up for reprint in a year or two and revision, there will be a section in there titled, "The Use and Application of Talking Signs." Thank you very much.
Moderator: It's a special pleasure to have Ron and Peter here, and we hope this is the start of a collaborative process to make sure that implementations of remote signage in the U.S. and Europe are compatible as Ron was talking about. We now have additional time for comments and questions.Thank you, John. As I have watched this proceeding today, I am reminded time and time again of the privilege it is to work with the quality of people that I have had an opportunity to work with. The rewards in this project have been financially postponed, you might say, but the real rewards have been in what we're about and also the quality of the people. This afternoon, as you all know because you received a notification, there is a press conference, and part of that press conference is the Mayor awarding certificates of appreciation to the three access committees--disability committees for BART, Muni and DPW. In addition, the mayor will be awarded along with DPW, Smith-Kettlewell, Parking and Traffic, and Talking Signs, a plaque by Bob Layton. Please stand up, Bob. Bob is with Public Technology, Inc. He is a director and is in town to make these presentations. Public Technology Inc. is the research and technology arm of the National Association of Counties, the National League of Cities and the International Association of City and County Managers. Last year, they gave twelve awards. In the category of transportation, worldwide, the City of San Francisco received their Achievement in Technology award for the installation of Talking Signs. This made quite a bit of stir and we were very thankful for that choice. Thank you.
The first commercial building will be demonstrated this afternoon, at 30 Van Ness, the Office of Public Works, Richard Skaff's office. Now that I mention that name, I think it's appropriate to say that he is a--what was the word that Bill was using a moment ago--proximal cause. Richard Skaff is the proximal cause of San Francisco adopting Talking Signs, much as Caesar was the proximal cause of the capture of Gaul. Richard is a wonderful person--most of you know him. He was here earlier, but had to leave. Hopefully you'll be over to meet him this afternoon. I call Richard on the phone and I say, "Richard ... " and he says "OK, take this down," before I can get my name out--everybody has had this experience. So I will do it and then he'll say, "So what did you call for?" Richard has been a tremendous help to us and we are very grateful for his support, and his impact is being multiplied by many energetic people right now.
The new San Francisco library is installing 230 signs; they have been delivered and they will be installed in that fabulous new five-story, $80 million building by the end of the year. Yerba Buena Gardens has been designed, the wiring has been put in for the first phase and the second phase has been designed. We have the intersections of Fifth and Market that Bond talked about. We're putting in two more intersections and there is a plan at Richard's request, incidentally Richard has no line organization power--it's pure force of personality and will and dedication. He is having part of the money that is collected if you get a ticket for parking in a blue place to fund the installation of Talking Signs in every intersection of San Francisco. JCDecaux installed its first toilet, which you all are probably aware of. Last week they had a celebration which was billed as the "First Flush." It has Talking Signs, it is real advanced, and they are putting Talking Signs in all of the toilets they are installing in San Francisco. South Harbor Marina is the marina where the San Francisco Blind Sailing Club ties up. They are in the process of installing 25 Talking Signs in various amenities -- how to get off on the ramps and so forth. The bus shelter in front of 30 Van Ness that I mentioned is a demonstration and hopefully that will expand.
I just got a call last week from an architect who said, "What is Talking Signs? I've got to bid to San Francisco airport and it specified for Talking Signs." So I like to get that kind of news that way. The Talking Signs will take you from your mode of transportation, whether bus or BART, and take you, at this point, to the four information booths which will be manned. So it is not as far as we'd like to go but we're very grateful and very happy that they have done it that far. As Jerry and I were saying last night, we've got our noses under the tent.
Stonestown, and Winston and Holloway, which were mentioned earlier, are permanent above-ground installations that Muni put in. And although the final decision has not been made, there is definite interest in putting them in four BART/Muni stations and five more Muni stations, including the Van Ness station which you will see this afternoon, which doesn't have Talking Signs yet, but it is two blocks away from the Lighthouse where the intersections are going to have Talking Signs--in McKesson Plaza, which is a major building, and in the Powell Street area, so we're starting to get synergism. Right there we have five or six different ways that Talking Signs are being used. One thing that we are very hopeful for in the future is buses, as we mentioned earlier, so that you can locate the bus coming and tell which bus is on the way.
What we haven't discussed yet--and we've done a prototype, or proof of concept--is on ATMs. And actually Bill, you did this experiment, do you want to talk about it or not?
A little bit about the international issues ... In addition to the English getting deeply involved in this and, of course, it's a European Common Market issue, but from the point of view of our getting involved in it, we have a representative in Sweden, Denmark, Holland, and Norway. We are putting a project into Venice, Italy which everyone has volunteered for, for four stations. We received the plans, and were working on the plans on where to put the signs, and Smith-Kettlewell, in its richness of human resources, has someone who speaks perfect Italian, so you never know what's going to pop up around here. One of the things that I want to mention--occasionally, you'll hear something derisory about Braille coming out of our team. And this in no way is to be interpreted as an anti-Braille bias, I just want people to understand this. Everyone in this room is pro-Braille. We want it to be used intelligently, that's all. So one of the ways we emphasize this in Talking Signs is that when we do have a postponed largess we plan to share it in a way that will enhance Braille-literacy as our pro bono. I am doing Talking Signs as a business which is helping people, but also it has a pro bono attitude towards Braille literacy which is certainly needed for the intellectual enhancement of the visually impaired community. To that end I want to recognize Bob Planthold, who is head of the accessibility community at BART and who will be receiving the certificate from the mayor this afternoon for their participation in Talking Signs. But he has also done something very significant along this line. Would you like to say a couple of words about it, Bob?
I am here on behalf of BART today, but what I want to publicize is separate from Talking Signs. Some weeks ago, I was able to get through our Board of Supervisors a resolution passed on a topic of open government. And while that might be standard politics, I did it in a different way. This is, to my understanding, historic. This is the first multi-lingual and Braille proclamation ever passed by our board. And nobody else seems to have ever heard of this. The idea was if you're going to try to have open government with people able to understand and participate in meetings, have it in the languages that people use--that people speak. English, Chinese and Spanish are all languages you can vote in, in this state and in this city. I wanted to make Braille the emotional equivalent in the eyes of our lawmakers so they can understand that this is a language and it needs to be paid attention to. I had heard complaints from people who read Braille, that very often they would request a meeting agenda in Braille and get it after the meeting, so they had no idea what was scheduled when and had to rely on the kindness of strangers. I asked if I would be able to publicize this so that you could know we've set a precedent. Unfortunately, our board, despite being told it's historic, hasn't seen it fit or worthy to publicize it. But this can be used for whenever Talking Signs has a major installation display, we can get similar, multi-lingual, or at least Braille, proclamations passed to make the point--there's a constituency out there that is not getting served. Thank you.
Albert B. Alden
Senior Electronics Engineer
The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute
2232 Webster Street
San Francisco, CA 94115
Fax: 415.561.1610
Ph: 415.561.1675
A. C. Anderson, B.Sc., C. Eng.
Managing Director
European Technology Consortium, Ltd.
The Hawthorns, Paynes Lane, Nazeing
Waltham Abbey, Essex EN9 2EU
England
Ph: 0992.460308
Kathleen Anderson, Mobility Instructor
Living Skills Center for the Visually Handicapped
13830 San Pablo Ave., Suite B
San Pablo, CA 94806
Ph: 510.234.4984
Karen Arthurs, Paralegal
Saperstein, Goldstein, Demchak & Baller
1300 Clay Street, 11th Floor
Oakland, CA 94612
Fax: 510.835.1417
Ph: 510.763.9800
Roland Au-Yeung
Senior Transportation Engineer
Department of Transportation
Caltrans, District 4 - Traffic
P.O. Box 23660
Oakland, CA 94623-0660
Ph: 510.286.4613
Anita Baldwin, Executive Director
Rose Resnick Lighthouse for the Blind
214 Van Ness Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94102
Fax: 415.863.7568
Ph: 415.431.1481
Peter Barker
Royal National Institute for the Blind
224 Great Portland Street
London W1N 6AA
England
Fax: 071.388.2034
Ph: 071.388.1266
Billie Louise Bentzen, Ph.D
Boston College Department of Psychology
Chestnut Hill, MA 02167
Ph: 617.552.0523
C. Ward Bond, President
Talking Signs, Inc.
812 North Blvd.
Baton Rouge, LA 70802
Fax: 504.344.2811
Ph: 504.344.2812
John Brabyn, Ph.D., Director
Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center
The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute
2232 Webster Street
San Francisco, CA 94115
Fax: 415.561.1610
Ph: 415.561.1658
Ron Brooks
Bay Area Rapid Transit
P.O. Box 12688
800 Madison Street
Oakland, CA 94604-2688
Julia Justice Cauthorn
Registered Investment Adviser
P.O. Box 540284
Houston, TX 77254-0284
Fax: 713.522.0068
Ph: 713.522.5021
Mike Cole
Director
Orientation Center for the Blind
400 Adams
Albany, CA 94706
William Crandall, Ph.D.
Scientist and Talking Signs Program Manager
The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute
2232 Webster Street
San Francisco, CA 94115
Fax: 415.561.1610
Ph: 415.561.1657
Linda M. Dardarian
Attorney at Law
Saperstein, Goldstein, Demchak & Baller
1300 Clay Street, 11th Floor
Oakland, CA 94612
Fax: 510.835.1417
Ph: 510.763.9800
Phil Dollison
President & General Manager
San Francisco Fire/ Burglar Protection, Inc.
428 Grove Street
San Francisco, CA 94102
Ph: 415.861.0994
William A. Gerrey, Engineer
Editor, Smith-Kettlewell Technical File
The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute
2232 Webster Street
San Francisco, CA 94115
Fax: 415.561.1610
Ph: 415.561.1677
Scott G. Grimes, Paralegal
Saperstein, Mayeda & Goldstein
1300 Clay Street, 11th Floor
Oakland, CA 94612
Fax: 510.835.1417
Ph: 510.763.9800
David Harris, Research Engineer
Royal National Institute for the Blind
224 Great Portland Street
London W1N 6AA
England
Fax: 071.387.4990
Ph: 071.388.1266, Ext. 2366
Judy Jackson
CMO/AA City of Oakland
One City Hall Plaza, Suite 1100
Oakland, CA 94612
Arthur Jampolsky, M.D.
Co-Director
The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute
2232 Webster Street
San Francisco, CA 94115
Fax: 415.561.1610
Ph: 415.561.1630
Dr. Margy Kahn Consumer Information Services
Sensory Access Foundation
385 Sherman Ave., Suite 2
Palo Alto, CA 94306
Fax: 415.323.1062
Ph: 415.329.0430
Kristin Kassis
Wells Fargo Bank
111 Pine Street, 6th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94111
Ph: 415.396.7755
Kathleen Knox
Rose Resnick Lighthouse
214 Van Ness Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94102
Jerry Kuns, Customer/Sales Liaison
HumanWare, Inc.
P.O. Box 426139
1182 Market Street, #211
San Francisco, CA 94102
Fax: 916.652.7296
Ph: 800.722.3393
C. Kwan Lau, Chief
Caltrans, District 4, Dept of Transportation
Electrical Design and Operations
P.O. Box 23660
Oakland, CA 94623-0660
Fax: 510.286.4561
Ph: 510.286.4555
Robert Layton
Public Technology, Inc.
City Manager, City of Urbandale
3315 - 70th Street
Urbandale, IA 50322
Ph: 515.278.3904
Jewel McGinnis
Certified Sensitivity Trainer
1591 Jackson St., #8
San Francisco, CA 94109
Ph: 415.931.8734; 415.563.4896
Linda Myers
Mobility & Wayfinding Consultants
23 Issaquah Dock
Sausalito, CA 94965
Ph: 415.331.8184
Bonnie Ng
Landscape Architecture Section
City & County of San Francisco
1680 Mission Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
Fax: 415.554.8308
Craig Nielsen
Traffic Maintenance Supervisor
City of Santa Cruz
1125 River Street
Santa Cruz, CA 95060
Fax: 408.429.5002
Ph: 408.429.3643
Bob Planthold
Accessibility Community
Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART)
400 Duboce, #115
San Francisco, CA 94117-3556
Ph: 415.431.6453
Theresa Postello
Mobility & Wayfinding Consultants
4325 - 23rd Street, #2
San Francisco, CA 94114
Ph: 415.642.9764
Frank Palumbo
Port of San Francisco
Ferry Building, Suite 3100
San Francisco, CA 94111
Ph: 415.274.0559
Barbara Rhodes
CCB
6396 Tamalpais Avenue
San Jose, CA 95120
Richard Russo
Orientation Center for the Blind
400 Adams
Albany, CA 94706
William C. Schwegler
Vice President, Product Development
Arkenstone
1390 Borregas Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94089
Fax: 408.745.6739
Ph: 408.752.2200; 800.444.4443
Richard Skaff, Disability Access Coordinator
City and County of San Francisco
Department of Public Works
30 Van Ness Avenue, 5th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94102
Fax: 415.558.4090
Ph: 415.558.4524
David Steed
The Steed Group
118 North Salinas Street
Santa Barbara, CA 93103
Fax: 805.963.0743
Ph: 805.963.0683
Dr. Ronald Stephens
Director of Uniport
University of Portsmouth, Park Building
King Henry I Street
Portsmouth PO1 2DY
England
Fax: 0705.842070
Ph: 0705.842380
Elizabeth H. Weber
Administrative Analyst, Assembly Rules Committee
California State Assembly
1021 O Street, Suite A-501
Sacramento, CA 95814
Ph: 916.445.8019
Annette M. Williams, Manager
Accessible Services Program
San Francisco Municipal Railway
949 Presidio Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94115
Fax: 415.923.6307
Ph: 415.923.6142
Bond M. Yee, P.E.
Bureau Chief, Traffic
City and County of San Francisco
25 Van Ness Avenue, Suite 345
San Francisco, CA 94102
Fax: 415.554.2352
Ph: 415.554.2300
Vanessa G. Young
Construction Management Consultant
Convention Facilities, Moscone Center
747 Howard Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
Fax: 415.822.0412
Ph: 415.822.0412