Grad students developing GPS project for visually impaired

At 356 acres, California State University, Northridge (CSUN) can seem like a mini city where one can easily get lost without a map. If you are blind or visually impaired, finding your way about the campus and its more than 100 buildings can be daunting without a guide.

Graduate students Robert Sweetman and Trudy Bowden-Callahan, both earning master’s degrees in assistive technology, are hoping to change that.

The pair received a $20,000 grant from the Ethel Louise Armstrong Foundation to develop a global positioning program that would not only help blind and visually impaired students navigate the CSUN campus, but provide them with information about what’s inside the buildings they are passing, as well as what lies ahead.

Jennifer Kalfsbeek-Goetz, a senior director in CSUN’s Tseng College and a faculty member in the assistive technology program, calls Sweetman and Bowden-Callahan’s project “awesome.”

“To put it simply, students who have low vision or are blind will have the opportunity to see the campus better,” Kalfsbeek-Goetz said. “For those of us who can see, we take for granted what is around us. For example, the Matador Bookstore.”

She said a quick walk through the building would reveal that it contains a copy center and sells postage as well as gifts in addition to books. It also has a convenience store. There is a seating area with a fast food court and monitors that display announcements. There are even some classrooms off to the side.

“Robert and Trudy are working on a way to help someone who is sight-limited or blind to truly understand where they are on campus, and sort of mentally visualize the function each building and all that is available at each site,” Kalfsbeek-Goetz said. “They are truly making this campus come alive and be seen in a way that many of us who are sighted take for granted.”

Sweetman, who is blind, and Bowden-Callahan have spent the past several months marking more than a hundred navigation points of interest on the Cal State Northridge campus. They then entered the information into Sendero GPS, a software program developed by the Sendero Group. The Sendero GPS program runs on several note-taking devices commonly used by the blind and visually impaired.

Attaching a small GPS receiver to the note-taker allows the program to inform its user about where he or she is and what is in the surrounding area.