Recently OSMP has established contacts with the community of blind people in Poland. Thanks to that we got to know their needs and learned how much OpenStreetMap data helps them in everyday life. It turned out that most of the applications they use to move around are based on information obtained from OpenStreetMap.

Currently I am preparing assumptions of the program directed to editors of OpenStreetMap, so that they would pay special attention to marking objects during mapping, which will facilitate movement of blind people.

The group of such objects includes among others: doors to buildings, markings of pedestrian crossings including crossings with bicycle paths, stairs and communication barriers.

We also intend to collaborate on marking public transportation stops at OSM so that this information can be used for voice navigation. Such a pilot program of indexing bus stops in Katowice has already been prepared by one of Polish editors (Let’s praise Luktar!) and, thanks to his persistence and huge amount of work, has been implemented. I invite you to read it in this thread on the Forum. He is currently preparing a similar project in Krakow, OSMP intends to assist him in it and at the same time organize such projects for other Polish cities.

Information about the progress of the projects will be published here, on the OSMP website and on our Facebook groups. I invite you to follow and actively participate in the project.