An intelligent cane for the visually impaired

There are 36 million blind people in the world and 217 million people with moderate or severe visual impairment. This handicap creates difficulties for individuals suffering from blindness or severe impairment.

Walking, going to work or to the supermarket, running are all activities that are not obvious to the visually impaired.

Kursat Ceylan, a Turkish engineer, has developed a connected rod that facilitates the movement of people with partial or complete blindness. Indeed, he created WeWALK, the very first intelligent cane for the visually impaired.

A sudden idea

During a stay in New York, Kursat Ceylan decides to go to his hotel. Suitcase in one hand and phone in the other, he advances cautiously when he hits a pole.

Since that day, he has been thinking about ideas to avoid this kind of misadventure. Passionate about travel, he wants to give access to the visually impaired, an opportunity to travel independently.

“Today, we are talking about flying cars, but these people just have a white cane.” Kursat Ceylan, founder of WeWALK.

Know your environment

In 2017, he began research to combine the white cane and technology. A rod 2.0 equipped with speakers, Google Maps, a voice assistant, Bluetooth to connect devices and sensors that vibrate in case of danger.

The object was designed to improve the movement of the blind and give them more freedom and it’s seen as a revolution for people with moderate or severe visual impairment.

Today, 1500 people use WeWALK. The company is in partnership with several institutes such as the Swiss National Association of Blind People (SNAB) and Royal National Institutes of Blind People (RNIB) with the goal of WeWALK being the future of the blind cane.

 

Sources: Channel Detours, WeWALK, WHO,

Image: WeWalk

 

High-quality writing is very important to members of the Global Goodness team. But no one’s perfect, so they always use Antidote to correct their texts.

 

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