National Online Dialogue on Transportation and Assistive Devices

 National Online Dialogue on Transportation & AssistiveDevices and Technologies

Good Evening Everyone,

 Earlier today, Eric Bridges posted information about the National Online
Dialogue on Transportation & Assistive Devices and Technologies. This
on-line discussion is being sponsored by the FTA and Easter Seals and is
intended to provide individuals representing the senior and disability
communities, public and private transportation providers, technology
developers, researchers and others to provide input on technologies that
(whether they currently exist or not) can help to improve the level of
accessibility of transportation for seniors, people with disabilities and
others. The on-line dialogue allows individuals to provide their own ideas,
to comment on other people's ideas, and even to vote for the ideas they
like, all with the ultimate goal of helping inform innovators about the
needs and ideas that people engaged in accessible transportation have for
making it better.

 The dialogue is divided into six themes called campaigns. Ideas can fall
into one or more campaigns. The campaigns include ideas for people with
mobility challenges, people with intellectual disabilities, people with
vision disabilities, people with hearing impairments and cross-cutting
ideas. Also, the site is accessible.

 So far, there are two ideas posted in the Vision campaign, and they both
belong to ACB members. One is Ray Campbell, and his idea is for a
smart-phone based app that would provide information about all types of
public and privately provided transportation within a given metropolitan
area. It's a great idea, and we could definitely benefit from such a
product.

 The other idea is mine, and it is focused on transit trip planning and
execution, and it is geared on addressing the specific challenges we face as
blind people, including determining a safe path-of-travel to the nearest bus
or transit stop, finding the actual stop, figuring out which bus to board,
identifying stops along the route and the correct stop to exit, and
navigating to the desired destination.

 Please check out the site, and add your own ideas and/or comments to Ray's
and my ideas. You can also vote for one or both of them.

 As you know, we're a low-incidence disability, so we need to support each
other's ideas so that they get some good vote counts. Otherwise, we'll have
a few votes, and the mobility-based apps will get all the votes and all the
attention, based sheerly on size of community.
 The link for the dialogue is here. The page is accessible, and so is the
registration process. There is a captcha, but the audio captia is very
clear.

 http://nationalonlinedialoguetadt.ideascale.com/
 Ron Brooks - Phoenix AZ
Ronbrooks67@gmail.com