BlindSquare

Description

BlindSquare is pioneering accessible navigation both indoors and outdoors. Know where you are, know where you're going, travel with confidence.

BlindSquare is a new solution that combines the latest technology to help the blind with their daily lives. It has been developed in collaboration with blind people and carefully field tested. You need either an iPhone or an iPad to get started. It also supports some additional accessories to enhance the experience.

How does it work?

BlindSquare uses GPS and the compass to locate you. It then gathers information about the surrounding environment from FourSquare. BlindSquare has some unique algorithms to decide what information is the most relevant and then speaks it to you with high quality speech synthesis.
“What's the most popular café within 200 meters radius? Where is the post office or the library?”

You can control BlindSquare also through voice commands. The Voice Command feature is a premium service requiring purchase of credits for continuous use. Voice Command Credits are available as an in-app purchase on the App Store.

Using BlindSquare as a GPS solution:

When you start the app, it will start telling you the interesting places and street crossings around you. By changing the radius, you can limit the area you are interested in. You can also search by search term or by category. You can select an interesting place from the search results and perform the following tasks:

1) Get contact info (address, phone number)
2) Open twitter feed or restaurant menu (if provided)
3) Make a phone call
4) Start tracking the place (BlindSquare will assist you by repeating the distance and the clock face direction)
5) Start your favourite navigator for turn-by-turn instructions (TomTom, Navigon or Apple Maps)

BlindSquare is aware of when you travel by car, bus or train and starts to report interesting places in front of you (for example, the next stops) and street crossings when you are passing them.

You can also save your own private places to iCloud so they will be found with your every device.

Using BlindSquare as a Foursquare client:

If you like to play Foursquare, you can do the following with BlindSquare:

1) Get a list of nearby FourSquare venues
2) When you are in a place, you can check in by shaking your device
3) Do a check in with commenting and twitter/facebook sharing
4) Correct the location of the place

BlindSquare supports the following languages: English, Arabic, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean (South Korea), Norwegian, Polish, Portugues, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.

VoiceOver usage is supported but it also includes higher quality additional speech synthesis by Acapela Text-To-Speech from Acapela Group.

Instructions in English: https://www.blindsquare.com/user-guide/ and https://www.blindsquare.com/faq/

Please note: This app retrieves data in real time from Foursquare and Open Street Map. Use of a flat rate data plan is highly recommended.

Continued use of GPS running in the background can dramatically decrease battery life.

Having only been released in May 2012, BlindSquare has already received several prizes and awards:

- GSMA: Global Mobile Awards 2013, Best Mobile Health Product or Service
- Apps4Finland 2012
- OpenCities App Challenge 2012
- The Finnish Information Processing Association: Best Product 2012

Please note: To use BlindSquare, your iCloud account has to be active so BlindSquare can access it to save your settings and places.

Continued use of GPS running in the background can dramatically decrease battery life.

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User Rating

3.93 out of 5

14 ratings in United Kingdom

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Ratings History

Reviews

I can’t change the options in blind square sounds I can’t change the language and voice

I said the blind squad sounds to 50% and they still get 200 when I turn the app back again. I don’t seem to be able to set a different voice to the normal voice I use every day. Very confusing very frustrating

Used to be the best

But not any more. Have been using this for the past 4 years. It is good but is falling behind the competition for example there are free apps that use google maps data to tell you about surrounding POI's like bus stops etc. BS is still using Foursquare data so the POI's can be out of date and inaccurate as they havent been checked or cleaned properly and there are'nt as many POI's available for example I will have to save a bus stop in BS myself whereas other apps have this data already and it is accurate. The battery drains much quicker when using BS to other gps apps and the feature to export all your saved places in a single file that you can email to yourself has been removed. I do not use icloud and do not want to export one single POI at a time. I found this feature useful to backup my Saved POIS.There are also free apps that will tell you if a POI or intersection is on your left or right which BS still does not do

Fantastic app, but with some anomalies?

I have had this app a few years and I use it exclusively for bus travel. Don’t need it for trains, only if the stop announcement automation is not working then I will employ blind Square. It is fantastic on buses because it opens up an horizon of information I’ve never had access to before. Even on very Familia roots. It gives you everything from pubs, restaurants to businesses. It reads out every junction which it never did before which is very helpful when judging my bus stop distance However, I hear references to searching bus stops as a landmark and I don’t know how to do that. Any help would be appreciated. i’ve never used it for walking a route maybe I will try that. I also do not understand the simulation function I’ve tried it and all I get is extraneous traffic noise please explain what the benefit of this is?

BlindSquare amazing.

I think this app is fantastic and most definitely worth the £20 cost. I know there are other apps available which are free of charge, but if you can afford the £20 then get this one. Being able to set favourite locations is brilliant and also knowing where you are when travelling on buses. I have also found a couple of really nice restaurants that I didn’t even know existed just by playing with the app whilst sat down having a coffee.

I use it every day traveling & found it so useful keep up your great work

I just love blind square

Blind square is my street companion. Always by my side, to tell me where I am and what is around me. I would say after losing my father, waits for 38 years used to be my BlindSquare, now at least in this aspect of my life, blind square is my father! 🙂

Would literally be lost without this.

Fantastic app! I use this all the time. Would highly recommend it.

Always interesting and innovative

Version three ads in Door navigation via the Ibeacon system. I expect Rnib and Guide dogs will want to adopt this innovation for blind Square users in the UK as soon as possible. This is a great application for accessing GPS information on the move with your iPhone. It's just gets better and better with each release and is worth every penny of the asking price

Simply worth every penny

Unusually, this access tech is worth every penny. Not just your usual knock the customer up in the air because its niche. I often get sent to locations that are unknown to me as part of my job but Blindsquare works well with your guide dog or other mobility aid. It delivers you to the door of wherever you choose with breathtaking accuracy. My own experience is that it genuinely does deliver you to within 5 m of your destination and on the correct side - left or right. Download this-you will not be disappointed - but to the developers, please don't make the mistake of hiking the price at any point in the future :)

In my view, the very best app in it's class

I first downloaded this in 2012 and used it somewhat, but found that it was clunky and to me, uncoordinated. It took a while of listening to demos and learning it's menu structure to come to the conclusion that it wasn't BlindSquare's fault, it was mine. Once I understood the layout and how everything all fit together like a puzzle, I basically stopped using any other GPS app and have used BlindSquare extensively ever since. Some apps update with what you'd think would be useful changes, but add nothing but bloat, BlindSquare isn't one of these thankfully. With every iteration of the app, the features and functions only improve, not get needlessly complex and useless.

Store Rankings

Ranking History

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Category Rankings

Chart	Category	Rank
Top Paid	Austria Navigation	9
Top Paid	South Korea Navigation	19
Top Paid	Hungary Navigation	22
Top Paid	Netherlands Navigation	22
Top Paid	Canada Navigation	24

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