BlindSquare App for iOS:
A Solution for Accessible Navigation
By Bill Holton
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If you're like me, you have several different GPS navigation apps on your iPhone, some free and others rather expensive. You may even be paying a monthly or yearly subscription fee to ensure you have the latest map and place data. If that is the case, here is a less expensive alternative you may wish to consider.
BlindSquare from MIPsoft uses data from Open Street Maps to provide street names and intersection alerts on iPhone 4 and later, or an iPad with either 3G or 4G data connection and service plan. The app then combines this map data with a treasure-trove of place names and other information crowd-sourced by millions of Foursquare users around the world. The result, BlindSquare, is a VoiceOver optimized app that offers accessible travel directions, along with the names and locations of millions of "points of interest" (POIs) including restaurants, banks, grocery stores, subway stations, and almost anywhere else you need or wish to go. In this article I will take you on a guided tour of this app and demonstrate how to make use of its many powerful features.
Click here to read the full article in the July 2014 Issue of AccessWorld, A publication of the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB).
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