The Tactile Maps Automated Production project isn't new, but it has taken on new legs since the San Francisco Lighthouse took over the project and started work to add new features to make the maps more versatile. J.J. talks to Scott Blanks, Senior Director of Programs for the Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired in San Francisco, to learn about the latest features with the TMAP project including representation of building shapes and pedestrian paths, and how to order a map for yourself.
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Hide transcriptTranscribed By Grecia Ramirez
Direct from Anaheim, it’s blindbargains.com coverage of CSUN 2019, brought to you by AFB AccessWorld.
For the latest news and accessibility information on mainstream and access technology; Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon offerings; access technology book reviews and mobile apps and how they can enhance entertainment, education, and employment, log onto AccessWorld, the American Foundation for the Blind’s free monthly online technology magazine, www.afb.org/aw.
Now, here’s J.J. Meddaugh.
J.J. MEDDAUGH: I’m here in one of the two Exhibit Halls at CSUN 2019. I have found Scott Blanks, the Senior Director of Programs for the San Francisco Lighthouse. Some of you might be familiar with TMAPs, which are getting lots of upgrades here at the show.
Scott, welcome back to the podcast.
SCOTT BLANKS: Thanks, J.J.
JM: So, in case some people are not familiar with TMAPs, why don’t you go ahead and bring people up to speed.
SB: All right. History lesson. So TMAP started in 2003. It was invented by Josh Miele with the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute. For over ten years, it existed as a service that allowed people to produce tactile street maps. It went moribund for a few years, and a couple years back, we were fortunate to work with Smith-Kettlewell again to restart the program.
We built a web app leveraging OpenStreetMap technology. So now, we can produce on demand street maps. And within the past few months, we added a few interesting upgrades.
One is the ability to map pedestrian paths. So now, in addition to mapping any city, whether it’s a rural or urban setting, we have the ability to map urban plazas, pedestrian plazas, parks, campuses. Any place that has a pedestrian path on the OpenStreetMap platform, we’re able to map. So these show up on the TMAPs, for those who’ve used it, as a dotted line as opposed to a solid line.
In addition, we have also added the ability to map buildings. So, again, OpenStreetMap, which is a crowd-sourced platform -- as things are mapped, more and more information is available, the maps get better and better. So if an area has buildings, those will show up as shaded, kind of a solid shaded tactile representation on the maps.
JM: I found it really interesting, as far as the buildings, that you took – or one of your staff members took – the Marriott and the vicinity right around here and actually included some of the additional overlay information on the indoor space. How hard was that to do?
SB: It was a lot easier than it would have been before. So what the Tactile Mapping Automated Production, the TMAP, project allows us to do now is we get a lot of the building information already. And instead of having to say to a designer, let’s find floor plans; let’s find, you know, streetscapes however we can track them down and do a design job, the design job is now a lot shorter for the design team that we have at Lighthouse.
So this is -- we’re really seeing this change so much, especially when we talk about college and university campuses. So many college and university campuses are already well-documented on OSM, and what we are able to do now is – if we work with, let’s say it’s a disability service program or someone else at the university who really cares about this and understands that it’s a great wayfinding and orientation tool for students, we’re now a lot closer. So we’re, maybe, 85, 90 percent. The design work that we have to do to make the map richer and more complete is a much, much shorter gig than it used to be.
JM: The A in TMAP being “Automated”. So I printed one out of the area around my house. It showed a pedestrian, slash, bike path near my house, and a whole bunch of paths near a public park near my house. I found that really interesting. How complete are you finding the data that you are getting?
SB: It – it’s completely inconsistent, which is, of course, to be expected when you have a crowd-sourcing platform like OpenStreetMap data that you get, I – you know, it would be easy to say that urban is always better, but that’s not always the case. We’ve seen a lot of information – even looking at southern California here where the conference is happening, there are a lot of places where you would expect to see buildings, but only streets have been mapped.
So it – this is a human-powered endeavor, OpenStreetMap is, so we have that to rely on. And it’s great, and it’s also potentially frustrating. But the good news is that over the years -- over the months and years, things are continuing to get better. We’re seeing that in the United States, we’re seeing that in North America. All over the world, people are continuing to map things and make the information more complete and valuable to people.
JM: You’re printing using one of the Tiger embossers either in Braille or in print plus Braille. What was it about the Tiger and the ViewPlus line that made you choose them?
SB: The graphics are really slick. So what we’re doing here at the conference is we’re using the Columbia embosser, which is tactile only. So folks can, you know, get their maps tactile only here at the conference for free, which is wonderful. But when we sell the maps through our adaptation store, we do so using an EmFuse embosser, which brings together the embossing technology from ViewPlus, as well as an – a LaserJet printer so that you have these beautiful visual graphics for the folks who have some functional vision as well as the tactile. So we really appreciate the EmFuse, which is a high-end embosser, of course, but it really allows us to, you know, create this complete package that works for someone who’s totally blind, someone who has functional vision, and maybe a family member or friend of theirs who wants to check it out as well.
JM: How much configurability is there? I notice when I did the map for my area, it was actually more effective for me to give an address near my house because I wanted to get more of the downtown area. If I go order a map over the phone, how does that all work?
SB: Sure. So when people order a map, they do have the ability to work with our customer service staff at the store and talk about ways that they might get a better map. When the store person takes down the address, they’ll look at an image, a preview, of that map before they just say, okay. We’re going to go ahead and emboss it. So there is absolutely the opportunity to have a conversation. With these new features that we’ve added, we have the ability to essentially check or uncheck a box. If we say, all right. This map looks great. Let’s take a look at what it looks like with or without ped paths, with or without buildings. Those make a big difference too, in terms of tactile density. Sometimes having all of those boxes checked means that your map is too busy. So we can decide, you know, let’s look at a map that’s at a certain scale with buildings and with ped paths, but also a bigger scale so that we get a bigger area, but we’ll take out those new features and just show the streets. So people can get a take on that same space with differing amounts of information included.
JM: And I would suppose that different people have different levels of ability or preferences about how much detail they are used to seeing or can handle on a map.
SB: There’s that. There’s – also, we consistently see people who have never, as a visually impaired or blind person, never laid hands on a tactile map. So it’s a new experience on a number of levels. There’s -- you know, we’re trying to help people become more literate, become more graphically literate, which is a – you know, we’re blazing some paths for sure.
Even someone who doesn’t read Braille though, what we’ve found is that they’ll tell us this, and then we’ll show them the map. They'll get jazzed about the tactile rendering, seeing the intersections, how they come together; and then it makes them think more, oh. Maybe I can get back to learning Braille. I started it, but I just couldn’t get into it. But maybe now, this is a – you know, something that will bounce me into that idea of Braille’s okay, and it’s not so hard, and I have a value here if I learn the Braille code.
JM: We’re getting a lot of new ways to learn about your surroundings and everything from TMAPs to remote assistance to indoor and outdoor navigation apps. How do you see this all fitting together?
SB: The tactile tools that we’re producing now are ones that people really enjoy because they’re able to take them with them or take a look at them before they leave the house. And at the same time, we see this technology changing and evolving. We want to make sure that this technology that we’ve created can also change with the times. So we’re happy to work with anybody who might have an interest in helping turn TMAP into – from something that’s just a tactile rendering into something that might be more able to, sort of, swing between different media. So we’re excited. We’re not just sticking to this. We recognize the changes that are happening and want to make sure that this is always a valuable and useful tool for people through the years.
JM: Is there anything on the road map – no pun intended – that you can share for the near future?
SB: We have a lot of things in mind. We’ve talked a lot about the idea of creating a map that might represent a route between two points. So that’s something that we hear a lot from, not only orientation and mobility instructors, but also from end users, that they really want to see, kind of, how things – where they should start and where they should finish up. And we are, you know, we have no official schedule in terms of our development, but we will likely be back working with our development team before the fall.
JM: Sounds great. If people want to order a map, they can order a map now; correct?
SB: Yes. You can order a map if you give the adaptation store a call. It’s (888) 400-8933. You can also go to lighthouse-sf.org/tmap to learn more about TMAPs. And in June, we will have the ability for people to order TMAPs online.
JM: Thank you so much, Scott. It’s much appreciated.
SB: Always happy to be on, J.J. Thanks.
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J.J. Meddaugh is an experienced technology writer and computer enthusiast. He is a graduate of Western Michigan University with a major in telecommunications management and a minor in business. When not writing for Blind Bargains, he enjoys travel, playing the keyboard, and meeting new people.
