Visually impaired passengers now can use the real-time bus app Chelaile to easily check schedules about over 8,000 buses in Nanjing City, Jiangsu Province.
Mr. Gu, who suffers from vision loss, got a voice message from his smartphone telling him that Bus No. 160 arrived at the Suijiacang Stop on August 13. He was never so easy to board the bus.
This app has opened a new chapter in smart travel by using the public transport system, a great news for those visually impaired passengers in Nanjing.
China has about 17.31 million visually impaired people in China. As the population is increasingly aging, the number of people with vision difficulties is also rising. Without barrier-free facilities, travelling by bus is very difficult for them because they don’t know which bus is coming to the station, often miss a bus, or board the wrong one.
To address this problem and meet people’s demands, the Nanjing Transportation Department has been trying to integrate the Internet with traditional bus service, such as the cooperation with Chelaile. All those 8,000 buses are now fitted with GPS devices and the data can be shared real-time with the app, which then tell the passengers the bus arrival information.
Smartphones used by visually impaired have a built-in screen reader, which reads the contents of a phone's screen out loud with a simple tap anywhere on the screen. When Chelaile is activated, information about bus routes, stops, and surrounding area can be automatically read to a passenger. The app also shows the nearest bus stop and bus arrival, making a bus ride more convenient and friendly to visually impaired people.
