GPS For The Visually Impaired - Loadstone GPS

Loadstone GPS

The Loadstone project is developing an open source software for satellite navigation for blind and visually impaired users. The software is free and runs currently on many different Nokia devices with the S60 platform under all versions of the Symbian operating system. A GPS receiver must be connected to the cell phone by Bluetooth. Many blind people around the world are using Nokia cell phones because there are two screen reader products for the S60 Symbian platform; Talks from Nuance Communications and Mobile Speak from the Spanish company Code Factory. This makes these devices accessible by output of synthetic speech and also allow the use of third party software, such as Loadstone GPS.

The Loadstone developers, who are blind, are from Vancouver, Glasgow, and Amsterdam. Many users from around the world have contributed improvement proposals as they know exactly what functionality helps to increase their pedestrian mobility. Monty Lilburn and Shawn Kirkpatrick started the project in 2004. After the first development successes, they made it public in May 2006. Since then, other volunteers have found their way to this project of global self-help. The program is under the GNU General Public License (GPL), and was financed entirely by the private developers and by donations of users. This product provides blind people with more independence from the trading policy and prices of the few global vendors of accessible satellite navigation solutions.

In large rural regions and developing, or newly industrializing, countries nearly no exact map data is available in common map databases. As such, the Loadstone software provides users an option to create and store their own waypoints for navigation and share it with others. The Loadstone community is working on importing coordinates from free sources, such as the OpenStreetMap project. In addition they are searching for a sponsor of licenses for commercial map data, such as is offered by the company Tele Atlas. The other major supplier is Navteq, which belongs to Nokia.

Loadstone is the name of a natural magnetic iron that was used throughout history in the manufacturing of compasses.
Sighted owners of S60 devices can use Loadstone for leisure-time activities geocaching.