Travelling with a vision impairment

People with a visual disability are often at more of a disadvantage than most, especially when it comes to travel. Some of the hurdles they may come across include restricted access for international travel with guide dogs, higher prices for the adequately trained airline staff,  and their perceived vulnerability to waiting criminals. However, there are companies working to advance experiences for people with visual disabilities, harnessing some of the latest technology and innovative ideas.

I reached out to Jo Webber, a disability inclusion education advisor who uses some of the latest technology on the market. Jo independently consults across Australia and the South Pacific; speaking with the Ministries of Education in different countries, providing advice on how their school programmes can be more inclusive for children with disabilities. Jo also has blurred central vision, meaning it is difficult for her to recognise faces, read information and interpret signs. As one of her eyes is worse than the other, gaging depth perception for actions like climbing stairs can also be difficult.

While she uses a retractable cane for everyday mobility, she still requires a sighted guide for her travelling; as to do so without one poses quite a challenge.

If you have ever been to an airport, you would have probably noticed how tailored the information is for people with sight. The fully sighted traveller faces many difficulties when in another country: different languages, currencies, customs and cultures ensure that many tourists have been taken advantage of for their naivety abroad. These hurdles are intensified for someone who has little to no sight.

“You get your security briefing and I'm always told ‘hide your cane don't show that you've got a vision impairment; it will make you a greater risk, make you more vulnerable and an easier target for any opportunistic crime’,” Jo says,  “so I always kind of take heed that people can see somebody with a disability as a little bit more vulnerable and can target you for crime, if that's what their intentions are. So I'm a little bit more careful when I travel and do sometimes conceal my cane.”

This type of warning has lead Jo to invest her money for travel options that are reliable and cater to her more appropriately - looking for airlines where the staff will guide her through airports and give customised safety briefings onboard. While there are some airlines who have incorporated disability guidance into their staff training, appropriate conduct around those with disabilities is not universally taught, especially not abroad.

One of the new technologies improving accessibility for people with vision impairments is the ‘OrCam’, produced by Mobileye. Having manufactured driverless cars, reactive cruise control and lane changing technology, the team at Mobileye harnessed their technical know-how to help aid those with disabilities.

“The OrCam is a little camera and the camera is seeing what’s in front of somebody, the camera is built into a device that attaches to the side of a pair of glasses,” says Rob Drummond, Business Manager for Qauntum, the Australian distributor for the OrCam. “It doesn’t provide any enhancement at all to what the person is actually seeing, but what it’s doing is analysing what’s in front of that person through the camera and giving audio feedback.”

This technology is not limited just to those with a vision impairment. It can also benefit those with learning disorders such as dyslexia, or for those with brain injuries. The camera instantly reads text from any surface in real time with their advanced optical sensor and because it is an offline technology (able to be used without an internet connection), it enables greater independence for the wearer.

“It’s incredibly handy,” Jo remarked, “you can just point out to a piece of paper - you could be reading an airline magazine mid-flight or the menu or the emergency procedures - and the technology will read it back to me, which is just fantastic.”

At present, the device is limited to the languages spoken where it is distributed. In the future, they hope to create a software that will translate any text into your preferred language and read it back to you in real-time.

While this product makes reading signs and textual information easier for those with low-to-no vision, it does not completely negate the need for a physical sighted guide while travelling. Guide dogs are incredibly useful for domestic travel however, unfortunately due to international customs, they cannot be used for international trips.

“There are tour companies that run tours for people with intellectual disabilities, for example, and then you might have one staff member to five or six passengers, all travelling together getting that support from staff.  I think it's a harder one to offer for people with vision impairments compared to any other disability group,” Jo says.

However, one such company which offers these specialised guided tours is Traveleyes. When fed up with being told he had to rely on others to travel, company founder Amar Latif decided to create a different kind of travel experience for people with vision impairments. They now create group holidays across 70 destinations for 12-18 people per group, enabling them to pair different sighted travellers with blind travellers each day.

“Sighted guides play a key role in the physical guiding on a trip and help someone with a visual impairment walk around a city/ destination with confidence,” Laura Middlebrook, Product Manager at Traveleyes explained. “Travelling to a new place can be overwhelming for anyone at the best of times, so travelling in unfamiliar locations without being able to visualise your surroundings can be quite daunting. Having a sighted guide takes away some of this concern."

These new initiatives are making life a little bit easier and more equal for those with vision impairments. Furthermore, the visual and audio cues implemented in pedestrian crossings across Melbourne show just how simple it is to provide assistance for people with visual disabilities.

“Look it's really critical having that for independence so I can independently walk up to a traffic light and know by the speed of the beep whether I can cross or not,” Jo said, “and one thing I just love - and I think it's only at the corner of Swanston and Little Collins - is the actual tactile indicators on the ground that are there for people who are blind or vision impaired as they light up as red or green. Apparently that was designed for mobile phone users who are always and accidentally crossing roads without checking the traffic… it’s fantastic for people with a vision impairment and I would love to see more of that in city intersections.”

While it is great that there are companies and initiatives working to improve life for those with a vision impairment; there is still clearly a long way to go. The absence of braille menus in restaurants and cafes, the ineptitude of people giving directions and offering help when asked, and the lack of appropriate conduct towards those with visual disabilities, are small, but important actions we could start improving, that would considerably benefit a large group of people.

Note: the appropriate description for someone who is blind or has low vision is: ‘person with vision impairment or low vision’ or ‘person who is blind’ and not ‘the visually impaired’ or ‘the blind’ as seen in the ACE DisAbility Network.

If you are interested in learning how to best communicate with someone with a vision impairment, read the guides on the Vision Australia website.