This app gives people who are blind step-by-step audio directions to easily navigate public transit
Initially piloted in three D.C. Metro stations, Waymap—which uses sensors in a smartphone to know exactly where a person is and how they’re moving—will be available across the city’s transit system by spring 2023.
Investment banker Tom Pey lost his eyesight at age 39, when an injury from a childhood game reemerged 30 years later to cause blindness. After struggling to manage with his sudden new reality, he moved into charity work to improve equity and access for blind people. While his new blindness didn’t restrict his ability to move, he pined for a core human experience that he profoundly missed: the independence to explore. “What I had lost is not the freedom to move, but the freedom to explore the real world around me,” he says.