Overview

Guide Dots aims to offer the most accurate turn-by-turn navigation, giving a person with blindness or vison impairment voice guidance and alerting them to important landmarks along their way.

About

For a person with vision impairment or blindness, walking through a busy shopping centre can be isolating and lonely. Without the sensory feedback of sight, so much contextual information is unavailable and missed, like your favourite shop having a sale, a friend sitting at a café nearby, or a noticeboard advertising a local school play.

Guide Dots, developed by NI and UDKU, aims to enrich everyday wayfinding resulting in a better connected, more inclusive community. By integrating multiple technologies into the one app, accurate navigation can harmoniously coincide with social media and localised crowdsourced information.

A perfect complement to a guide dog or cane, this app uses audio prompts, Facebook Places and Google Maps to call out places as people pass. And with the ability to tag route details and find nearby friends, Guide Dots is a walking guide to any city in the world.

With Guide Dots, life for people with vision impairment or blindness is not only about getting from A to B with the help of a guide dog or a white cane, it is about navigating their world independently, spontaneously connecting with friends, discovering and exploring local opportunities and actively engaging in their local communities.

Outcomes

Guide Dots is now available in the Google Play app store.

In 2016, Guide Dots was one of Optus “Future Makers” and was awarded a grant that enabled an entirely revamped app to be launched in late 2016.

As the Guide Dots community grows, so will the level of connectivity and social inclusion. Download the app today and help us make the world a safter, more interesting and inclusive place for all.