SightCompass: Helping the Blind

For many years, blindness is one of the many disabilities that gravely affects one's lifestyle. The visual sense of human beings is one that is most vital: sight is the most significant sense when one needs to navigate foreign areas, or recognizing objects and being visually stimulated by many new visual technologies. Furthermore, being blind prevents one from reacting appropriately to many immanent dangers, from rock slides to crossing the street. There are ways to help the blind, such as sight dogs that give indication to objects that the blind cannot hear, and prototype technologies that give the blind a glimpse of vision, or help the blind "see". One specifically is SightCompass, made by WorldBeacon,  a system that combines proximity beacons and a smartphone application to help the blind "see". The system consists of an array of beacons fixed to any object or building and can be programmed to output specific information such object such as the layout of the building and where everything is in that building. The beacons are detected via bluetooth with a 92m detection radius, and they have a battery life of 2 years, so these beacons can help the blind for a long time. The system itself has not been implemented yet, but arrangements has been made with many organizations that help the blind to install these systems in various sites in Arizona. It's currently in development, and even resorted to crowdfunding to raise awareness of their system in hopes that SightCompass will be evident in many educational and business institutions. To see more about the SightCompass, follow this link:http://www.gizmag.com/sightcompass-bluetooth-beacons-blind-surroundings/34282/