BlindZA.com - Coastal town sight-seeing using the vOICe

Coastal town sight-seeing using the vOICe

This is a form of review, or maybe just commentary with regards to a form of sight-seeing (from the blind/visually-impaired perspective) I experienced a little while ago making use of the vOICe back in October 2022.

During a weekend of October in 2022 I was down near the Western coast of South Africa, in a smallish town, at a venue that's more or less situated something like 900 meters from the seashore, next to where a relatively wide river's estuary is situated - think it widens out as it enters the ocean.

As in, not 100% sure of it's actual width, but, would guess that it's at least 500 meters across, if not even a bit more.

In any case, me and my girlfriend were walking around the area a bit, and I was using the vOICe on my cubot mini android phone to explore parts of the scenery along with her describing it to me.

This means she'd give me a general description of the scene, and I'd then scan around it using the vOICe, asking her about specific bits of detail I noticed while doing this - things like scanning the line of the water's edge, and then looking across the estuary and asking her to confirm my interpretation of the distance across it, whether there was specifically a group of trees in place, where the road bridg ran over it, etc., as well as the actual surface of the small boat jetties that are in place, where reeds seemed to be growing on the water's edge, picking up rock formations in places, etc., and, she kept on telling me I was bringing bits of detail to her attention - as in, she'd have described it generally and when I then asked her about, or for confirmation of some bit of detail, she'd then realise there was something specific, or interesting in place at that viewpoint.

I could also, obviously, take note of where groups of friends were standing around between the waterline and the buildings - and, the humourous side of this was there reaction to the sounds they heard coming from the phone, since I had just left it on speaker at this stage, but anyway.

One other thing specifically used it to take a look at was an old ship anchor that has been mounted on the one lawn, with it's anchor chain mounted to a beam above it so that it stands up straight in front of you.

To give you an idea of this view, while it's shaft and arms are a bit encrusted with old barnacles, or forms of shellfish, the arms themselves are roundabout 4 meters wide in total, and, the shaft is taller than my 1.8 meters, and I was specifically using the vOICe to look at the outlines, etc. before then touching these shapes as well.

Standing on the one balcony area, and then looking out over the nearby ocean, I think I was picking up some occasional bits of changes from incoming waves as well, but, that was not something I tried too carefully.

All in all, the main thing was that, while was having general descriptions told to me, I was picking up additional details, and visualising the parts of the environment and scenery a lot better working with the vOICe.