From: David Andrews 
Subject: Re: Presentation of latest research on Talking Signs technology
I have used the Marco system at the Closing the Gap conference, for the
past two years.
For me, I have to say it is a mixed bag.  the system helped some in certain
instances, but overall, probably isn't worth it.  It was of little use in
the Exhibit Hall, because of the noise, the large number of booths, and the
specific orientation needed to pick up a given sign.  You could miss signs,
or get the wrong one, couldn't hear the thing, etc.  It was of some help in
orientation in some areas, but after the first time, I didn't bother using 
.
Personally, because of expense, etc., I don't expect these things to ever
be widespread, so there is little incentive for a blind person to carry the
receiver.
David andrewsAt 12:43 PM 5/24/98 -0800, you wrote:
>
>
>I'd like to submit the article below as a discussion item for this list.  
>I have some thoughts about it, pro and con, though would prefer 
>to hear from others first.  Anyone wish to begin a discussion?
>
>Regards,
>Jamal
>
>----------
>From the web page http://www.dinf.org/csun_98/csun98_063.htm
>
> CSUN 98 Papers 
>
>TALKING SIGNS (R) REMOTE INFRARED AUDIBLE SIGNAGE FOR TRANSIT
>STATIONS, SURFACE TRANSIT, INTERSECTIONS AND ATMS.
>
>                      Bill Crandall, Ph.D.
>                      Smith-Kettlewell RERC
>                       2232 Webster Street
>                    San Francisco, CA. 94115
>
>                       B.L. Bentzen, Ph.D.
>                 Accessible Design for the Blind
>
>                        Linda Myers, M.Ed.
>                Marin County (CA) Public Schools
>
>The most common signage for people who are blind is restricted
>to tactile displays. This requires persons to be at the location
>of the signs before they can identify the information it bears.
>Using such signage as an aid in locating and traveling to a
>telephone booth, bus stop, elevator, public electronic terminal,
>building entrance or exit, leads to the paradoxical effect of
>having to already be there before one knows where it is. In
>addition to 
>label and direction information, remote infrared signs directly
>orient the person to the labeled goal and constantly update the
>person as to his progress to that goal. That is, unlike Braille,
>raised letters, or voice signs which passively label some
>location or give mobility instructions to some goal, remote
>infrared signage provides a repeating, directionally selective
>voice message which originates at the sign and is transmitted to
>a hand-held receiver. The direction selectivity is a
>characteristic of the infrared message beam and ensures that
>persons using the device gets constant feedback about their
>relative location to the goal as they move towards it.
>
>An analysis of the National Center for Health Statistics
>estimated that 4.3 million non-institutionalized people in the
>US had difficulty reading the newspaper with their corrected
>vision -- a functional definition of perceived limitations
>termed Severe Visual Impairment (Nelson and Dimitrova, JVIP,
>March, 1993). An additional 2.3 million people also reported
>difficulty with seeing medium to far distances. Another recent
>study (Chiang, et. al., Milbank Quarterly, 1992) estimates 1.1
>million people are Legally Blind under the definition of tested
>acuity (<20/200). Data from the Bureau of the Census put the
>figure for this same level of impairment at 9.7 million people
>(McNeil, 1993). Many other disabilities prevent persons from
>reading print. In addition to people who are blind or have low
>vision and may not be able to see the print, there are many
>stroke, head-injured, autistic and dyslexic (or even just
>educationally impaired) persons who may not be able to
>assimilate printed language even though they can see the page.
>Many people can accept this information through speech. During
>the past three years of human factors research we have
>established that blind people using Talking Signs can easily
>learn to use the system effectively.
>
>
>
>
>Transit Stations:
>
>Transit stations present unique challenges to people who are
>print disabled; they must visit specific points along
>potentially crowded and complex paths of travel having no signs
>which are legible to them, in order to successfully navigate
>from street entrances to the proper train. Such a course
>involves the challenge of identifying the correct entrance,
>change and ticket machines, station agent kiosks, entry gates,
>escalators, steps and elevators onto the platform, a specific
>platform area and specific train or coach.
>
>Previous research indicates that Talking Signs users
>independently learned many characteristics of the system which
>we did not specifically teach them in the short training
>preceding test trials. Ease of use, learning to scan, ease of
>picking up messages, and following the sign to the destination
>are thought to be related to the level of training and indicate
>a need to evaluate training requirements for effective and safe
>use of Talking Signs. The present study, therefore focused on
>the question: "What is the minimum amount of training required
>for a person to effectively and safely use the Talking Signs
>system?" To answer this question, we evaluated the travel
>characteristics of 36 visually impaired people who used the
>Talking Signs system as an aid to navigation through a complex
>subway station in downtown San Francisco (Powell Station) for
>the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) and the San Francisco
>Municipal Railway (Muni). The broad cross section of subjects
>was divided into three groups, each group being matched for
>varying levels of mobility skills, degree of residual vision,
>and method of travel (guide dog or cane), presence of hearing
>impairment, and level of spatial thinking. Each group received a
>different level of training on the proper use of the system.
>
>>From our results it is clear that persons having visual
>impairments are readily able to learn to use the Talking Signs
>system for the wayfinding information necessary for traveling
>routes in a transit station without assistance. Within the
>limits of the one hour test period, of 36 participants traveling
>routes without aid, 35 successfully completed at least two easy
>routes 23 successfully completed at least two medium routes
>(plus all easy routes) and 17 successfully completed at least
>two hard routes Plus all easy routes and all hard routes). It
>appears that training enabled participants who were more highly
>trained to complete more complex routes. This finding was not
>statistically significant, however. Even the minimal level of
>training in which participants received written instructions in
>their preferred medium, enabled many participants to
>successfully travel routes in a complex transit environment in
>which they were given no information other than that available
>from the Talking Signs, themselves.
>
>
>
>
>Surface Transit and Buses:
>
>In the absence of Talking Signs transmitters, 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 be at the
>beginning, middle or end of a block, may or may not be marked by
>a pole, may or may not have shelters, and shelters may be along
>either the curb side or at the building line away from the curb.
>In order to locate a particular bus of many which are parked
>along a curb, the blind pedestrian must hurry from one door to
>the next, asking the bus driver or waiting passengers the
>identity of each bus.
>
>Locating and Identifying Bus Stops: Eighteen blind participants
>located and identified bus stops using either the Talking Signs
>system plus their usual mobility skills or their conventional
>strategies, including tactile signs, but without asking for
>assistance. They then located and identified a particular bus
>out of three lined up along a curb using either their normal
>procedure of asking the driver or using the Talking Signs
>system. Participants were generally more successful in locating
>and identifying bus stops using the Talking Signs system than
>using tactile signs, particularly when the bus stop was
>identified only by a pole-mounted sign rather than a bus
>shelter. Participants using dog guides had particular difficulty
>in the absence of the Talking Signs system.
>
>Identifying Buses en masse: In order to locate a particular bus
>of many which are parked along a curb, the blind pedestrian must
>hurry from one door to the next, asking the bus driver or
>waiting passengers the identity of each bus.
>
>Success on the bus identification task was high regardless of
>whether the bus was labeled with the Talking Signs system or
>not, with only 9 failures on 108 attempts to locate the correct
>bus within one minute. There were also no significant
>differences in times to locate the bus using the two methods.
>However, subjects thought that because there were no physical
>obstacles, either people or newspaper racks interfering with
>walking near the edge of the sidewalk directly to the door of
>the bus, the experimental set-up for locating buses represented
>an unrealistically easy task for the "no Talking Signs"
>condition. That is, subjects volunteered that under more
>typically challenging conditions, the Talking Signs system would
>make identifying and locating buses much easier. There was,
>perhaps a statistical "ceiling effect" on this task.
>
>When, during the Focus Group, participants were asked to choose
>between labeling bus stops with Talking Signs transmitters and
>labeling with tactile signs, all eight participants preferred
>the Talking Signs system. The tactile signs were considered
>helpful for definite confirmation, however.
>
>Remote infrared audible signage provides wayfinding information
>for surface transit as it has previously been shown to do for
>transit stations, thereby enhancing independent use of public
>transit by persons having visual impairments.
>
>
>
>
>Pedestrian Crossings at Light Controlled Intersections:
>
>Intersection crossing points are the places in any journey where
>the traveler is most vulnerable to danger, in the form of
>collisions with passing vehicles which can result in serious
>injury or death. This significance is widely recognized not only
>by blind persons themselves, but >by the Orientation and
>Mobility profession, who spend a good deal of their mobility
>training time with each client attempting to teach techniques
>for successful street crossings. At controlled intersections in
>busy urban areas, many confusing cues are presented to the blind
>traveler who must rely primarily on traffic sounds to accomplish
>the task. For example, the usual cue for determining when it is
>safe to cross in this situation is the detection of traffic
>beginning to move in the pedestrian's direction of travel and
>parallel to him. However, anywhere that green arrows allow turns
>in front of the pedestrian, safety is not assured by this cue.
>In addition, even for the most experienced traveler, there are
>certain things which can not be determined by sound, such as the
>exact width of the street or if a turning island exists. Having
>access to all of this type of information lowers the risk of
>making an inaccurate judgment.
>
>Progress has been made in avoiding many of these ambiguities
>through the deployment of prototype Talking Signs units at
>signalized intersections in downtown San Francisco. The
>application involves providing two types of information to
>pedestrians. The first tells the user where he or she is
>located; it is comparable to the information posted on the
>visual signs at each intersection. The repeating message users
>hear from the speakers of their hand-held receivers when they
>are walking down the sidewalk is, for example, "Traveling East
>on the 800 block of Grove Street toward Larkin Street." When
>users nears the curb, another message is heard through the
>receiver's speaker. This "pedestrian crosswalk indicator"
>message tells users the condition of the traffic signal. It
>repeats, for example "Wait... Larkin Street" or "Walk Sign....
>Larkin Street," the particular message depending upon the status
>of the visual walk/wait sign. Sighted pedestrians also have
>specific information about the characteristics of an
>intersection such as turn lane, mid-block crossing, cut-through,
>island, pedestrian activated 4-way walk signal, free right
>turning lane, short walk cycle, use of pedestrian activated
>signal at island for walk signal to cross second half of street,
>etc. These extended messages which communicate special
>attributes about an individual intersection can be added to the
>message (following the street name on the approach message).
>Alternatively, this additional information may be provided
>through a different receiver channel.
>
>In determining the effects of Talking Signs on street crossing
>performance at complex signalized intersections, 20 persons
>having very little or no vision were asked to cross four complex
>signalized intersections in the Civic Center area of San
>Francisco under two conditions: with information provided by
>Talking Signs, and without information provided by Talking
>Signs. All crossings were made under normal daytime traffic
>conditions.
>
>Participants completed the experiment individually, in sessions
>lasting approximately 90 minutes. Participants received
>approximately 10 minutes of training in using Talking Signs at
>intersections before completing the experimental procedure.
>
>
>
>
>Results: Binomial (step) tests were conducted in which each
>participant was compared with him/her self on each of the above
>measures at each of the four intersections, in both the Talking
>Sign and no Talking Sign conditions, and then a statistic was
>computed to determine the probability that differences between
>performances using Talking Signs and no Talking Signs were
>significant.
>
>Participants were more successful on eight of the nine measures
>when using Talking Signs than when not using Talking Signs.
>Nineteen of 20 participants were more successful when using
>Talking Signs than when not using Talking Signs. One participant
>had the same (nearly perfect) score both with and without
>Talking Signs. Participants included persons using both long
>canes and dog guides, persons with and without hearing loss,
>persons who considered themselves to be good to excellent
>travelers, and persons who did not consider themselves to be
>good travelers. The following types of data were obtained by the
>experimenter as each participant made each crossing.
>
>Safety: Did the participant begin the crossing during the Walk
>phase of the light cycle?
>
>  * Talking Signs 99%
>  * No Talking Signs 66%
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