Season 1 #3 – Getting There with GoodMaps

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Hi. Welcome to NFB Newsline Tennessee presents the show that hooks you up with the best that the National Federation of the blind of Tennessee has to offer. I am your host, Yvonne Newbert. If you're joining me for the first time, welcome to the show. If you've been here before, then welcome back. NFB Newsline Tennessee is a proud sponsor of this podcast. To learn more about NFB Newsline, go to nfbnewsline.org. that's nfbnews line.org. or you can call 629-236-2428 on today's episode, I get to try out an app that I haven't tried before. I haven't been able to because it's not set up in my area. The app I'm talking about is good maps. It's indoor navigation. Some of you've probably heard of it. I really like our technology. Anything that I could get my hands on that's adaptive tech, I want to try. It's really exciting. It's really fun and getting to try new things and then come and let people know about it, it's just great. I have over 250 apps on my iPhone, and I do use most of them. I make a point to, and one of the apps I have that I haven't been able to use is the good Maps app. I've been wanting to meet up with Kevin Klein to do this and haven't just had the chance. He lives in Nashville, and I'm down there pretty often, but every time I'm down there, he seems to be gone somewhere doing work for them. But on May 24, I was in Nashville for, for the Tennessee school for the blind alumni weekend. And the stars must have aligned or something worked out right, because Kevin was also in town, so I got to meet with him at the library for accessible books and media, or as we all lovingly know it, the library for the blind. My library adventure with good maps got off to a great start when we ran into, well, I didn't literally run into him, but we ran into Clayton Altam. He's the director for the library. And of course, Ruth Hemphill, the outreach librarian and friend to us all, was there before we started with good maps. I spoke a little with both Clayton and Ruth about goodmabs. We all know Ruth. Not many of us know Clayton as well, but we're going to fix that. I'm going to have both of them on again, so that's going to be a lot of fun. To do.

Clayton, what do you do here at the library?

I'm the director of the library for accessible books and media, so I oversee the daily operations of that department.

Have you looked at the good maps and what it can do?

Yes. I was really excited to connect with them and to try and make our library one of the first venues in Tennessee. That was my goal when I reached out. So I'm really pleased so far with how it looks, and I can't wait for it to be all the way ready.

Well, thank you for having us here today to do this demonstration.

Sure.

And Miss Ruth Hemphill is here. Ruth, how do you see good maps being utilized inside, you know, the blindness community and also outside?

Oh, I think it will be wonderful. Right now, our building is designed that very much for sighted people. If you don't know where the library for the blind is in the state library and archives, you probably still will have to go to the front desk. But this way, you could, when you come in, find the ladies room or find the elevator easily. And it'd be good for people who don't have vision loss in a building, because it would tell them if they came in to visit the state librarian and they didn't know where his office was, it would tell them how to get to that.

Thank you. And also here to demonstrate good maps is Kevin Klein. Kevin, what is your role at Goodmaps?

Yeah, so I'm Kevin, and I work in the community engagement role here at Goodmaps. I have been in this role since about last July, and I'm also a blind individual, so I use the app as well. So it's great to be able to come out and test it out with everyone and show them how it can work.

Is it on Android?

Yes, ma'am. It's on Android and iOS and works on probably 95% of smartphones.

Not only did I get to play around with the good Maps app, I sat down with Kevin Klein, and we talked about his journey from becoming blind to where he is now working for good maps.

So thanks for having me. I live here in Nashville, Tennessee. I am 28, almost 29, and I lost vision about five, five and a half years ago at age 23. I had 2020 vision up until age 23, so never knew much about being blind, of course, or hardly knew any blind individuals throughout my whole life. And it was no pun intended, but it was very eye opening, and, you know, it's been a journey ever since. So with the mixture of losing my vision and Covid trying to learn how to be blind, things like that. So, you know, the first, give it a year or two, it was in a pretty rough place. I've got a, what they call Lhon Libras, hereditary optic neuropathy, and lost my vision about over six months, give or take. And, you know, went from 2020 to not being able to drive, to not being able to hardly walk straight. So that was all a change. That was, you know, I had to stop working both jobs in the 6th month. I had to figure out what I was going to do day to day, and I was trying to figure out how I could get my vision back. Well, you know, I was in a clinical trial, which with lhon, a lot of things are all still in trial. So for about a year or two, I was just sitting, hoping and praying that, oh, I'm going to get my vision back and everything's going to be fine. Well, hit a wall and, you know, learned, hey, you've got to learn to be blind and you've got to figure out what other people with your situation can do and what other routes you can take in your life. Because I was still, like I said, 24, 25 at this point, still very young, had a lot of life to live. So to make that change, well, as soon as I decided to learn to be blind, Covid hit. So, you know, that came with a lot of challenges, but personally, that came with trying to learn how to be blind over the phone and over Zoom and things like that, which I just was not doing well at. I got the phone, you know, voiceover on iPhone down, and I got mobility skills down. So those two things kind of got me through a lot when it came to, you know, day to day living, learned how to cook while being blind, which I enjoyed doing in the first place, and, you know, doing everyday essentials such as that. So that was all taking place in Kentucky where I was raised. And then a couple years later, my girlfriend at the time, now wife, moved down to Nashville and.

Okay, I have a question for you.

Go ahead. Okay.

You said you learned how to use your iPhone and you learned how to cook. How did you learn these things?

So the iPhone one, I had to switch over, switched from Android just because a lot of people had said, you know, they like the iPhone better. So switched over and tried that out and learned a mixture between a starting, you know, some of the classes over the zoom that I was taking through the McDowell center out of Louisville, Kentucky, and also a lot of trial and error almost on my own, you know, messing up, accidentally texting these people or calling these people and learning how not to do those things on my own, along with some of the training I had, was how I got the phone down so easily. The mobility training, though, of course, we know that's harder to do on your own. So I had a couple mobility instructors, one out of bowling Green and one out of Nashville. That kind of got me to where I am now and gave me more confidence with navigation and getting around independently, which I loved to do before I lost my side. I like to do a lot of things on my own, of course, and being able to do that now is a game changer.

What was your game changer? I'll give you an example. Mine was the day that I got the courage to just walk from my door down to my mailbox and back to my house. What was your moment? That, okay, maybe I'm gonna be able to do this.

So it might have came a couple years later. You know, I was learning mobility skills, but I wasn't really going anywhere. Didn't have many places to go. Like bowling Green wasn't a big city. I couldn't just, you know, I was in a neighborhood where I couldn't just go walk around or anything like that. No businesses. And so I wasn't really going anywhere by myself. But probably a game changer was going actually to the 22 NFB convention in New Orleans where I actually got my job. And we'll get into that. But I met some people that, you know, still close with now that we're very independent and, you know, walking in, seeing two or 3000 blind, low vision individuals doing all these things kind of was my moment, I guess, to realize, hey, you can, you can do more than what you are right now. So that that kind of pivoted me into looking for, you know, a new career and getting jobs before that and things like that.

So talk about your job search and how you got the jobs you did.

Yeah. So like I said, I was moving down to Nashville because of, one, the accessibility, you know, transportation opportunities. There's more, more jobs, but also, you know, more organizations such as NFB and ACB and Achilles, things like that that I was like, I want to join. I want to hang out with all these people. I wanted to see what they're doing. But when it comes to the job search, I was in with the vocational rehabilitation here in Nashville and I just started that right before I went down to the NFB in New Orleans. And, you know, it was going fine. I was doing some more assistive tech training, things like that. Didn't know what I wanted to do didn't know how to do those things, anything like that. So it was all a learning process and I was continuously searching for a job. Went. The only reason I went to New Orleans was one, it was near my birthday, and I called a friend, said, hey, let's go. But also because there's a career fair. And I thought, hey, if they're wanting to, you know, speak to all these blind individuals, then they can speak to me. So I went down and spoke to everyone there, including good maps. Met my boss now there, but didn't hear anything for a few months from anyone. I had some great conversations, but that didn't really go anywhere for a while. So I found a job working in a warehouse in north Nashville, you know, in a semi trailer, throwing boxes around. And it was, it was an interesting time. I had worked at UPS when I had vision, so I kind of knew the basics of what I was doing. But it wasn't a career I wanted forever. It just was getting me back into making money for myself and being able to pay bills on my own and not ask for as much assistance, things like that. Because my goals were eventually to get off of disability, you know, and make enough money to wear. I don't have to rely on anyone else. So that was a start to that. But it wasn't the finished product. So give that about 1110 or eleven more months past that July NFB convention, I heard from good maps. They had reached out through the grapevine. I actually reached out to someone in Bowling Green, and they reached down to me and said, somebody's looking, looking to talk to you. So I had a few interviews with goodmaps and they said, we're going to create this, you know, this position kind of around you. If this works with you, it's community engagement. You know, you're a good maps user. You can speak to the community and you can also, you know, give them all the pros of our application. So I was like, okay, yes, let's do it. So that's kind of how I got with good maps. And that was last July in 23 is when I started. And, you know, since then I've been to, you know, I've been to Canada, I've been to the west coast multiple times. I've been to multiple states. And, you know, things like that, testing, doing conventions, exhibiting all these different things to where I can reach out to people like myself to say, hey, there's some solutions for navigation and indoor navigation.

Stick around and go with me on a quest. I went questing for water, using good maps as my guide.

Is there a water fountain on there?

That's a good question. We can find out. Open good maps, check back in.

Loading building.

Okay, it did, it just said loading building. So the maps load.

Yes. So the takes maybe a few seconds to load the map due to us having a visual map. Augmented reality and the sounds and tactics for the blind and low vision.

Okay, do you have sounds on the last time?

Yes. So it was speaking to us the whole way and giving us approaching and when to turn left and right and what we're hearing the deaf can see in written text and also with the arrows as we're walking, see if there's a water fountain. So this is gonna be interesting because I'm not sure. So let's find out. Currently there's 141 points of interest and that's any offices or anything that might be mapped out. Close enough question.

Before we go to this route, can you pull up a route and look at step by step without actually having it go to.

I was sitting on my couch and I wanted to know how long it take me to walk to that water bottle filling station from my, you know, from the lobby here or whatnot. When you're sitting remotely, you can tell you the distance and time travel.

Okay, so let's find water fountain.

Go straight, rotate left, continue 15ft, turn right, uncontinued, continue, continue 75ft and turn right, continue 45 and 25ft, go through door, go through door ahead.

The door.

Turn right, then take another right.

Last turn, turn right.

And the water fountains right in front of you.

Yeah. Okay. That's, that's great.

Yeah. So just a quick note on like a rotation. So if it says rotate, you know. Right, and then it says go straight, just as soon as it says that, just start walking. Because if you turn anymore, it'll want you to turn again because you're not, as it was saying the first time, if that makes sense. It's very sensitive, but it's a good thing because it kind of keeps you on a straight path, if that makes sense.

So good maps is primarily for larger places?

Yeah, give or take. Yes. We're not going to go map holiday Starbucks because it's, you know, it doesn't, logistically doesn't make sense or financially for the Starbucks or us. And also, you know, things, you walk into a smaller venue like that and it's just filled with moving things like, you know, tables and chairs that aren't going to be mapped out on our end and there would only be maybe a handful of routes. So it just, it doesn't make sense. But we, you know, we're looking at anywhere from eight to 10,000 square foot and above. So we've got. I'll kind of run through kind of where we are, if you'd like. We're in about seven or eight countries now and growing. So we're anywhere from the UK to Bolivia to, obviously, the US. We've got locations about to open in Australia, Canada, things like that. So we're all over the place, but that, that goes into transit. So we're huge in the rail systems, we're growing in the airport systems. Here. In the US especially, we've got universities, schools for the blind, museums, libraries, and we're trying to grow more into other spaces as well. It's just getting in contact with those areas and letting them know the benefits of having our application, you know, right.

Now, good maps, you know, just gets you to where you're going. Is there any, like, thoughts on expanding into maybe a more descriptive, say you're mapping a museum, and when you get to somewhere, maybe a descriptive in this room, there is a statue of this, a painting of this, or descriptions or anything like that?

Yeah, there's been talks and all kind of, uh, you know, I'll quickly kind of give you a little background of good maps. So the last five years is kind of how long we've been around. We started out of american printing house for the blind, and of course, the main objective was for the blind low vision to have access to indoor, accessible navigation. And once we took care of that with our previous app, Goodmaps explorer, a lot of our partners, such as Michigan State University, they have a large death population. Eric. Well, if you can solve for this, why can't, you know, you solve for other things such as navigation for the deaf, the neurodiverse, wheelchair users, or just anybody that gets lost. You know, I joke with people saying I have 2020, and I still got lost back in the day. So what that meant for us was we had to work on expanding our app as it was then. So last October, we created a new application, just called good Maps in one word. So if you look it up in the app store, it'll be good maps and it'll mention indoor navigation. But on a side note, Explorer will be sunsetted out by the end of this year. I know a lot of users are familiar with that and it'll be gone shortly, but, you know, so we transformed the application to have augmented reality. So the arrows, as you're going, it's got a visual map, it's got the text for the death and anyone who would like to read the directions instead of hearing them. And also has still the same capability for the blind, low vision. So we're, as we're expanding our application, we're trying to perfect that and then grow into, oh, we can add these features and, you know, these other things as we go down the line.

I'm a big believer, you know, in having your toolbox and having a lot of different tools in your toolbox to use together, or if one works for something and one might work for something else, even though they do some of the same things. Do you have other apps that you use with your good maps?

Yeah, so I like to use the example of, like, an airport, for instance. So we know an airport has a lot of other, you know, stores or restaurants inside of it. So what we're looking at is, say, if we fly into Portland Airport or Louisville Airport tomorrow, we can get you to the door of that Starbucks. And then I personally would use, you know, other applications such as IRR, be my eyes, things like that. So the fun thing with that is a lot of our users on explorer previously had seen the deep links for some of those applications in our app at the end of the route. So our goal is to bring those deep links back, you know, soon. They're not there yet, but the goal would be we can get you to that end product that you're wanting, whether it's getting a coffee at Starbucks or not. You can. We can get you directions to the door of Starbucks. You can pull up iroh or be my eyes, whatever it is. And it can, you know, those virtual assistants can help you, you know, navigate the menu, figure out what you're wanting, where you can go sit, because we know chairs and tables move all the time. We're getting you to that location and they can help you navigate the things that change.

We're going to have to do this again and do the outdoor. Good maps.

Yeah, so good maps. Outdoors is a, you know, it's gps only, and it's, I always tell people, you know, compare it to Google or Apple Maps, but with a blind, low vision focus, with the sounds, with the clock face directions, the specific points of interest that you can create, things like that. So it's definitely a good, as you say, tool. We throw another tool in the tool belt, as we say. So it's good to have in your back pocket. I use it here in Nashville, and we have users in 25 different countries with good maps outdoors.

Currently, I'm looking forward to using that. When I get to a city that has decent sidewalks and decent navigation, unlike my city.

Yeah, each city is different, that's for sure.

Yes. Our city has sidewalks that start and then you turn the corner and you go a little bit and then they stop. Yeah. It's the sidewalk to nowhere.

Yeah. Hopefully one day everyone will picture accessibility first.

Now, has goodmaps thought of like the technology for the indoor and, you know, leading you to different things, doing maybe something like that with outdoors, say, Memphis, you know, a big zoo or something.

Yeah. So as our technology is growing, we are looking into other things such as that, like, for instance, a university. You know, we have multiple buildings mapped out in Michigan State University or Wichita State, other universities. Well, you know, what if we could get people to use our app to get to each building without leaving our application? So we're looking into that now to try and help solve that issue. And of course, the lidar that we use, it scans the structures of the indoor space that we're mapping out. And with that being said, we're seeing what our other solutions are with Lidar can be, you know, it's a little more tricky outside. So in an outdoor space. So we're seeing if that's going to be a possibility soon.

Now, with good maps, there is a tutorial, isn't there?

Yes. So in each tab of the Goodmaps application, there's going to be a short tutorial to kind of help you get through that first run. That way you don't have to call me every single time, which I'll still answer. But, you know, for instance, you were able to pull up the app today and I walked into this building and you were already using it, which I was. I was happy to, happy to hear you roaming around. So it was good. Good to hear.

What, as advocates, can we do? Because if we want our, like, city, county building or something.

Oh, yeah. So, you know, first, obviously, you can reach out to me or our team, but also, you know, if you have a contact at that building, maybe get in touch with them or get one of our team members to talk to them as well. Conversations start the whole thing. Like, we can talk about mapping this out and that out, but, you know, just talking to that individual at that building starts the whole process of making this happen. So anything, anywhere from that, you can join. I have a Facebook group called Good Maps user Community that I run, and you can reach out to me on there. You can email infooodmaps.com or Kevin dot kleinmaps.com. that's Kline. And you know, we can start that conversation with those venues. We are actually almost done with an advocate letter that you'll be able to email out to whatever building in your area that you are, you know, interested in having accessible. So what that will do is we're going to have all the information, a couple videos, whatever it might be, you know, just a brief description of what we do, why they should be interested, and you could send that straight to them from our webpage, and then they can contact us and start the process.

Kevin, thank you for joining me today. This has been great. I just met Kevin at our state convention about a month ago or so. I've heard a lot about you from James.

Hopefully that's good. I don't know.

We won't talk about that on the podcast.

Speaking of NFB, I'll throw it out there. We will be at the national convention and we will have a demo area in the lobby of the Rosen center, and it has been mapped out in that, you know, area to come try it out with me and our team there to try it out for yourself.

Are you going to be in Jacksonville at the ACB as well?

I will be. So on July 7 and 8th, I'm going to travel from Orlando to Jacksonville, and I will have a booth there as well. So I'd love to speak with anyone that will want to talk to me. I will talk her head off. I appreciate you having, it's been fun.

Thank you, Kevin.

Thank you and hope to see you all soon.

Thank you all for joining me on another great edition of NFB. Newsline. Tennessee presents.