[Accessibility] Audio-tactile maps

[robert]

Thanks for all your comments

I want to have a platform independent program. I am using linux on my
laptop but it should also work (eventually) on Windows mobile Android
and Apple iOS.

It has to work offline, Data traffic abroad is prohibitively expensive.
So that rules out the use of Google, you cant download the map data. 

I know too little about HTML5  apps to say anything sensible about them.

I came to the idea because I am using Navit now on my linux laptop, a
big screen with screen magnification. Only reading the names in the map
is very very difficult for me. For me it would be sufficient if navit
spoke the names I am pointing at. But for my completely blind friends
the rest of the map would also need to be converted to sound.

Navit has a very good map extractor that lets you download the OSM map
of the area you want. (like Holland or western Europe). And you can
compile it for Android and Linux. It is an Open Source project.
That is why I am thinking of using it. It should be possible to attach
to  the proces of transforming the map data into the image on the screen
and add sound output. That way you would not convert the image on the
screen into souns but the actual map data. This way the sound output
would not be the translation of a translation.

By using navit (or maybeanother open source program that uses OSM) we
could save a tremendous amount of work.

 I have almost no programming skills, so  I am looking for people that
have those skills and want to help. 

Esther could you tell me some more (maybe off-List) about your Audio map
for desktop computers? It sounds very interesting.



Robert