10 years apple school Solothurn – How blind people go on city tours thanks to smartphones – News


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The Solothurn apple school trains visually impaired people in how to use smartphones. Not all apps are self-explanatory.

The initiators describe their business model as “digitization at its best”. You mean the integration of blind and visually impaired people thanks to the use of smartphones. For exactly ten years, those who are interested have been learning how the smartphone can be used by blind people in everyday life in courses at the apple school. Reading the newspaper, checking timetables, finding your way around a city – the smartphone is also useful for visually impaired people.

The apple school was founded in the canton of Solothurn on February 14, 2012. The name came from Apple’s iPhone. Apple integrated accessibility features for people with visual impairments early on. The aim of the apple school was to provide blind people with a kind of personal assistant thanks to these smart technologies.

Compared to earlier mobile phones, however, smartphones have no tactile buttons. That is why blind and visually impaired people mainly access the voice control of the devices. The screen remains black, the blind person speaks to the device and receives audible responses. Or the visually impaired person dictates the text for an e-mail to the device and sends it off.

City tour without eyesight

This Monday, the apple school organized a hiking club for blind and visually impaired people in Solothurn. “The course is aimed at people who have a good basic knowledge of how to use the iPhone and have installed the ‘MyWay Pro’ app on their iPhone,” says the course description.

Legend:

City tour via app: An enrichment in everyday life for blind and visually impaired people. Solothurn is explored here.

SRF

Sandro Lüthi is 45 years old, visually impaired, he sees everything “as if in a fog”, he explains on the tour of Solothurn. As managing director of the apple school, he shows the registered course participants how to experience a city tour via app. The corresponding app is not self-explanatory: “You don’t see the app, but it has menu items and tabs, you have to practice that”.

The app is not visible, but has menu items and tabs, you have to practice that.

“At three o’clock in 173 meters on the right is the natural history museum,” reads the app. As soon as the user points the smartphone at three o’clock, the device vibrates and it becomes clear in which direction it is going. «The vibration gives security; it confirms that you are on the right track,” Lüthi explains the technology.

Obstacle-free hiking trails already exist. These were originally created for wheelchair users. But these are also very suitable for blind people, because literally nothing stands in the way. “If we now walk such a path, I can use the app to record it while running, give the path a name and make it available to other people,” enthuses Lüthi.

Legend:

On the left managing director Sandro Lüthi, on the right founder and honorary president of the apple school Urs Kaiser.

SRF

Discover apps – that was the beginning of the apple school. “Thanks to speech recognition, visually impaired people can operate their smartphones smoothly – just like sighted people can,” says the founder of the apple school, Urs Kaiser. He also takes part in the city tour of Solothurn. Since Kaiser’s idea for the apple school, the range of courses has grown, social media are also increasingly an issue, and the Android courses are constantly being expanded. Digitization at its best, as the association calls it.

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