We're conducting tests of the Talking Lights technology here in Benetech's offices this week. The technology is cool and it's fun to see people playing with it. Here's what Charles LaPierre, one of our senior engineers, sent out to our team:

I wanted to let you all know why there are all these new lights hanging around the office. Benetech is consulting with SenderoGroup on a project for guiding blind users indoors. The lights around the office consist of 4 fluorescent lights, and 5 night lights. The night lights are either using red LED's, or infra red. These lights are "Talking Lights" and transmit a unique ID to an optical receiver carried by the user. This ID will refer to the light's position in the office.

This week there will be around eight test blind subjects that will be traveling around the office along predefined routes; these routes the subjects are traveling will be timed.

If you are here while tests are being conducted if you would please keep noise down since any sound could give the user a clue to their orientation and skew the test results. Also please don't try to help a test subject if they get disoriented, there will be an orientation and mobility expert on hand to offer assistance and document the problem in the test results for that user.

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