Members of the National Federation of the Blind leave a hearing in Maryland's capital, where leaders lobbied for legislation aimed at addressing the perils of near-silent hybrid cars to blind pedestrians.
(Credit: Anne Broache/CNET News.com)ANNAPOLIS, Md.--Hybrid cars may be on every environmentalist-cum-trend setter's hot list, but their surging popularity is raising alarms among the blind and their advocates, who fear the near-silent vehicles could endanger lives.
In recent months, the National Federation of the Blind has launched what is becoming an international lobbying campaign for legislation that encourages--or flat-out requires--automakers to install noisemaking technology to address those potential perils.
Top NFB leaders focused their efforts Tuesday on this quaint state capital on the Chesapeake Bay, where legislation creating a state "Quiet Vehicles and Pedestrian Safety Task Force" is pending. If Maryland passes the bill, it would be the first in the nation to take action on that front, although other states are considering similar proposals.
"As we increase the number of quiet vehicles on our streets, we increase the risk that blind and other pedestrians face," Jim McCarthy, the National Federation of the Blind's director of government affairs, told members of the Maryland Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee at a hearing about the bill. "We potentially lose our independence if these become ubiquitous."
Ideally, blind advocates would like to see states pass laws that would set minimum sound standards for hybrid and electric vehicles, but they've run into resistance from automakers on that front. McCarthy said his group views the Democratic-sponsored Maryland bill as a good "first step," although he noted that legislatures in Virginia and Hawaii are poised to consider bills that would go further.
The Maryland state bill, which also has a counterpart in the state House of Representatives, would not set any particular rules for cars bought and sold in the state. But, if passed, it would instruct a task force to make recommendations by the end of the year on "a minimum sound level and the nature and characteristics of the minimum sound to be required for all vehicles sold and licensed in the state."
The blind community is also taking its push to Congress--and abroad. On Tuesday, the NFB president was in Geneva, Switzerland, testifying about the dangers of hybrid vehicles to the blind at the World Forum for Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations, a United Nations body, according to NFB spokesman Chris Danielsen.
McCarthy and other NFB leaders sought to dispel any accusation that they're hostile to environmental progress. They said they're as pleased as anyone else about states like Maryland that have passed laws requiring a certain percentage of vehicles sold in the state by 2011 to produce low emissions.
The trouble, from their perspective, is that the growing number of vehicles that cannot be heard while operating in electric-power mode throws a wrench in a blind person's ability to negotiate street traffic confidently and independently. And, in an effort to win broader support, they're emphasizing that this isn't just a problem for blind people: All pedestrians and bicyclists should be concerned for their safety.
Carmakers, not surprisingly, have bristled at the notion of regulations requiring them to adopt a specific technology in their hugely successful hybrid vehicles. The Maryland bill clearly attempts to blunt some of those gripes by specifying that task force members are not "required" to specify a certain technology that car manufacturers must use to meet recommended noise levels.
No car industry representatives were present at Tuesday's hearing here, but in a letter to the state senate committee, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers said it supported the bill, albeit not without reservations.
The trade association--which represents BMW, Ford Motor, General Motors, Toyota, Volkswagen, and other major carmakers--said it would be pleased to take a seat on the task force but worried the bill puts too much emphasis on noise-generating technology alone.
The car makers encouraged legislators to be open-minded about the range of technologies that could be used to resolve the blind community's concerns and also noted that a committee established within the Society of Automotive Engineers, an industry-sponsored group, is already researching such approaches.
For instance, they pointed to the potential use of a forthcoming wireless warning system that will allow cars to talk to each other and to roadway infrastructure. That system, known as Dedicated Short Range Communications, or DSRC, could be used to warn pedestrians, blind or otherwise, of oncoming cars with "far more specificity, meaning, and context" than a simple noise generator, but the wording of the current Maryland bill seems to preclude the task force from considering that option, the AAM suggested.
It wasn't immediately clear what the bill's chances of passage were. Legislators on the Senate committee had few questions for the bill's advocates and did little to show their leanings. The Maryland Department of Transportation, for its part, said in a statement that it supports the measure because it views quiet vehicles as an "emerging" safety issue that warrants more research. (There was no mention from the various stakeholders of what role that drivers could or should play in ensuring pedestrian safety.)
Michael Gosse, president of the National Federation of Blind of Maryland, said all his group wants is a cost-effective solution based on the sounds that cars are already capable of making.
"I don't know about you," he told the state senate committee, "but I don't want cars going down the street beeping like those little carts do in the airport. I think that would be pretty annoying."
Greater availability of silicon germanium chips and better reliability in bad weather will make radar technology favored over other automotive obstacle detection technologies, according to an ABI Research report released Wednesday.
There are four major types of obstacle detection technologies currently used in vehicles for applications like blind spot detection and parking assistance. Radar will probably win out over sonar, lidar, and cameras, said David Alexander, principle analyst at ABI Research, who specializes in telematics and automotive research .
"Lidar and radar were a couple years ago on a few cars and they were the competing systems...There are lidar systems for about $600 and the radar systems tend to be about $2,000. We thought there would be a boost for lidar, but over last couple of years this hasn't happened. We see that radar sensors are going to come down in cost significantly and it is also much more reliable in bad weather conditions," said Alexander.
Radar uses radio waves that bounce off obstacles. There is a transmitter and antenna that receives the signal. Radar can determine not only the obstacle, but also its speed in relation to the vehicle.
"A radar beam does not care if an object is reflective. If it's a solid object (radar) will detect (it)," said Alexander.
Lidar, on the other hand, uses a low-power laser to emit a beam and analyze its reflection to determine the speed and proximity of a nearby object. But because it uses a form of light that is easily reflected, dispersed, and sometimes absorbed, lidar does not do as well as radar in snow, fog, and heavy rain--when drivers likely need their blind spot detection most. Lidar is also less reliable than radar when faced with a nonreflective object like a car with caked-on mud.
The sensors used in radar systems will also soon be coming down in price. That will make the pricey but more reliable technology even more viable, said Alexander.
Radar sensors are currently expensive because they use gallium arsenide, a combination of elements for its sensor core that are very expensive and difficult to get manufacturers to work with it. It is commonly found in military and aviation radar uses. But the other technology that can be used is SiGe (silicon germanium).
"They're expecting SiGe chips to be available in 2009 and in volume in 2010. What's nice with these SiGe (chips) is that manufacturers have experience manufacturing these types of things quickly, accurately, and cheaply, and so expect the price to come down as volume grows, " said Alexander.
Cameras with image analyzing processors will also have their place.
Several manufactures have been using one or more cameras coupled with analyzing image processors. These cameras have multiple functions in obstacle detection, whereas with radar and lidar there is only the ability to detect an object and its speed. Even though the systems are expensive and not as reliable as people would like just yet, cameras can detect things like road markings and, therefore, be used for lane-departure warning systems. That's something radar and lidar simply can't do.
The newest generation of adaptive cruise control also uses a combination of cameras and sensors, allowing it to work better in stop-and-go cruise control modes.
Microsoft and open-source site SourceForge plan to offer a free plug-in early next year that will convert Office 2007 files to the Daisy format, which translates text to speech.
The free tool will add a "Save as Daisy" option within Word 2007 and 2003. Daisy, or Digital Accessible Information System, XML files can be "read" aloud by speech synthesizers, paired with audio narration, and used to create electronic Braille. Users can navigate open-standard Daisy documents quickly by jumping between page elements such as headers and indexes.
The Daisy Consortium of 70 nonprofits has aimed since 1996 to make all published information available to people with visual impairments and learning disabilities.
Digital narration serves computer users with visual impairments, people with learning challenges like dyslexia, as well as those with Parkinson's disease and other conditions that make it hard to type or hold a book.
With the release of the Office 2007 suite in January, Microsoft shunned the popular, XML-based OpenDocument Format for its own, new Office Open XML format. The OOXML documents, which include Word files with the DOCX extension, are easier to retrieve, if corrupted, than older DOC files.
Versions of Word prior to 2007 can open OOXML documents after a one-time download of a free converter from Microsoft. However, critics gripe that Microsoft's format change was unnecessary and clumsy. Microsoft maintains that the new format enables greater flexibility, such as accessibility features.
(See also accessibility in Mac OS 10.5 Leopard.)
Leopard is Apple's best-looking operating system yet, from its breezy Cover Flow file browsing to the starry-looking Time Machine backup. It's no wonder visual artists love Macs.
But how well does Leopard work for blind users?
"[Vision-impaired] people who use Macs are mostly in the category of, "My boss says we have to use Macs," or "I'm a teacher and that's what I'm stuck with,"" said Crista Earl, director of Web operations at the American Foundation for the Blind.
Among 10 million visually impaired people in the United States, at least 1.5 million use computers, according to the American Foundation for the Blind. To serve this population, Windows machines have traditionally offered more baked-in features and compatibility with third-party software and devices than Macs.
Earl, who is blind, only uses computers running Microsoft Windows. She edits documents in braille and relies upon a screen-reader application to "read" text and links aloud in Internet Explorer and other programs.
However, to serve users such as Earl, Apple has made 17 Universal Access enhancements within Leopard.
Leopard is the first operating system that can be installed using a braille display. It also supports the forms of braille used both for reading and editing. There are enhancements to the VoiceOver tool, which reads aloud text on a page in a male or female voice. Users can now move VoiceOver's preferences from one Mac to another, so they don't have to waste time configuring each new machine. In addition, VoiceOver can recognize misspelled words and jump to chunks of a Web page instead of forcing a user to wait while it reads one word at a time.
Earl said these changes are a step in the right direction, and she hopes to check them out on a friend's Mac. Mac OS X also offers some advantages over Windows for people with limited vision, such as the capability to display the screen in black and white.
"I don't mean I'd give up my Windows computer," she said. "I have work to do. It's gonna take a lot from the last time I saw VoiceOver."
Accessibility features from any vendor are usually more frustrating to use than advertised, Earl added. Part of the problem is that instead of integrating essential tools within their operating systems, Microsoft and Apple have left it up to third parties to fill in the gaps with extra, paid software.
For example, the screen readers within Windows and Mac OS X pale next to applications like JAWS or Window-Eyes. Earl wonders why the tech giants don't just buy one of the better tools, then weave it into their operating systems.
"One of the reasons things haven't gotten very far is that the companies making screen readers are constantly fighting the next battle," Earl said.
Blame the ever-evolving nature of Web site designs. Once screen-reader makers figured out how to make Adobe Acrobat accessible, for instance, Adobe Flash rendered Web pages mute to blind users. Now that more Flash sites work with screen readers, the AJAX coding of the Web 2.0 era poses new challenges.
Both the challenges in making accessibility tools and the market for them are poised to expand. More young people are suffering repetitive stress disorders such as carpal tunnel syndrome, while aging Baby Boomers grapple with diminished vision, hearing, and mobility.
People whose hands and arms suffer keyboard fatigue, or worse, can use speech-to-text software that types what they speak. For them, Windows builds in voice-activated dictation and commands. Leopard enables voice-activated commands only. The rich Dragon NaturallySpeaking from Nuance runs only on Windows. For Macs, the equivalent ViaVoice (or iListen, which I haven't tested) are considered less robust.
I find each of these dictation applications awkward to use. Just spend an hour with one for a few laughs as it garbles your speech.
Nevertheless, hardware and software manufacturers appear to be paying more attention to the needs of an affluent, aging population.
"A newcomer to visual impairment tends to expect, rightly, for things to be a whole lot easier than they are," Earl said. "That pressure of lots of disappointed users might make things better for everybody."
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