Sights for Hope Becomes First Host Site of its Kind for MABLE Maps App

By Sights for Hope Team |
A Sights for Hope client smiling while testing the MABLE Maps indoor navigation app on a smartphone with assistance from a Lehigh University graduate student. Other clients and students also are testing the technology in the background at Sights for Hope’s Lehigh Valley Services Center.

Sights for Hope’s Lehigh Valley Services Center has become the fifth location overall, and the first social service organization serving people with vision loss, to serve as a host site for MABLE Maps – an innovative accessible navigation application being developed at Lehigh University.

Now available for download on iOS devices, MABLE Maps helps people with visual impairments and blindness navigate unfamiliar indoor spaces where conventional GPS applications are less effective. Using artificial intelligence and detailed building maps, MABLE Maps provides turn-by-turn directions to destinations and an exploration mode that describes nearby surroundings. Users can receive spoken instructions or visual information tailored to their individual needs.

MABLE Maps has been created under the leadership of Vinod Namboodiri, Ph.D., Director of Lehigh University’s Center for Community-Driven Assistive Technologies and a member of the Sights for Hope Board of Directors. Namboodiri’s work developing accessible technologies is informed by his own experience with retinitis pigmentosa, a condition that causes progressive vision loss.

Through this collaboration with Lehigh University, Sights for Hope clients are helping test the technology and providing feedback to guide its continued development.

“Our clients bring to this project essential firsthand knowledge of the challenges it is intended to address,” said Dennis Zehner, Executive Director and CEO of Sights for Hope. “Through this collaboration, they are not only exploring technology that could help them navigate the world, but also helping shape a solution that could empower others like them.”

Sights for Hope is a nonprofit organization that empowers people to succeed however they see the world. Its programs and services build capabilities and confidence in people who are blind or have visual impairments, equip children to read in kindergarten, and enrich people’s lives with habits that protect their eyesight. Sights for Hope has proudly served Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley since 1928 and Monroe County since 2003. It is an independent member of the Pennsylvania Association for the Blind (PAB) and the multi-national VisionServe Alliance.

Image: A Sights for Hope client smiling while testing the MABLE Maps indoor navigation app on a smartphone with assistance from a Lehigh University graduate student. Other clients and students also are testing the technology in the background at Sights for Hope’s Lehigh Valley Services Center.