OKO, A Helpful Travel App

OKO is an app for the blind that makes every pedestrian signal accessible.

For over a year now, I have been using an app called OKO, a helpful tool you can use in conjunction with your orientation skills and mobility tools of choice to identify when it is safe to cross a street more easily. Currently, OKO is only available to Apple iPhone users. After installing and starting the app, you will receive a bit of training on how to use it. Hold your phone up so the back camera can see ahead of you. The app is now ready to read a pedestrian signal. The app will give you slow vibrations/beeps indicating that you should not walk and fast beeps and vibrations to indicate that it is safe to cross in the direction your camera is facing. When the walk sign is counting down toward the end of the walk cycle, you will feel mid-tempo effects for the countdown. If the app cannot correctly read the pedestrian signal, you will not receive any audible or vibrotactile feedback.

I appreciate this app. Sometimes, I am at a street corner where there is no parallel surge of traffic indicating that it is safe for me to cross. I also appreciate that I can use the app while approaching the corner so I don’t have to wait for the next cycle. If I approach after the start of the walk cycle or when pedestrians have the Walk sign before parallel traffic gets the green light, this app saves me time by giving me the same information sighted pedestrians have.

I want to stress that this app should be used with your mobility skills in mind. The app can only identify pedestrian signals; it cannot identify if drivers are disregarding those signals. Try it out first with familiar intersections so you can decide for yourself whether you want to trust it. However, I have found it to work both in daylight and in the dark.

Learn more about the OKO app at https://www.ayes.ai/oko

 

Review by Tai Tomasi, Director of Digital Accessibility Advocacy at the Massachusetts Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired.