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BlindSquare app for iPhone and iPad


4.8 ( 768 ratings )
Social Networking Navigation
Developer: MIPsoft
39.99 USD
Current version: 5.55, last update: 5 months ago
First release : 22 May 2012
App size: 55.7 Mb

BlindSquare is pioneering accessible navigation both indoors and outdoors. Know where you are, know where youre going, travel with confidence.

BlindSquare is a new solution that combines the latest technology to help the blind with their daily lives. It has been developed in collaboration with blind people and carefully field tested. You need either an iPhone or an iPad to get started. It also supports some additional accessories to enhance the experience.

How does it work?

BlindSquare uses GPS and the compass to locate you. It then gathers information about the surrounding environment from FourSquare. BlindSquare has some unique algorithms to decide what information is the most relevant and then speaks it to you with high quality speech synthesis.
“Whats the most popular café within 200 meters radius? Where is the post office or the library?”

You can control BlindSquare also through voice commands. The Voice Command feature is a premium service requiring purchase of credits for continuous use. Voice Command Credits are available as an in-app purchase on the App Store.

Using BlindSquare as a GPS solution:

When you start the app, it will start telling you the interesting places and street crossings around you. By changing the radius, you can limit the area you are interested in. You can also search by search term or by category. You can select an interesting place from the search results and perform the following tasks:

1) Get contact info (address, phone number)
2) Open twitter feed or restaurant menu (if provided)
3) Make a phone call
4) Start tracking the place (BlindSquare will assist you by repeating the distance and the clock face direction)
5) Start your favourite navigator for turn-by-turn instructions (TomTom, Navigon or Apple Maps)

BlindSquare is aware of when you travel by car, bus or train and starts to report interesting places in front of you (for example, the next stops) and street crossings when you are passing them.

You can also save your own private places to iCloud so they will be found with your every device.

Using BlindSquare as a Foursquare client:

If you like to play Foursquare, you can do the following with BlindSquare:

1) Get a list of nearby FourSquare venues
2) When you are in a place, you can check in by shaking your device
3) Do a check in with commenting and twitter/facebook sharing
4) Correct the location of the place

BlindSquare supports the following languages: English, Arabic, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean (South Korea), Norwegian, Polish, Portugues, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.

VoiceOver usage is supported but it also includes higher quality additional speech synthesis by Acapela Text-To-Speech from Acapela Group.

Instructions in English: https://www.blindsquare.com/user-guide/ and https://www.blindsquare.com/faq/

Please note: This app retrieves data in real time from Foursquare and Open Street Map. Use of a flat rate data plan is highly recommended.

Continued use of GPS running in the background can dramatically decrease battery life.

Having only been released in May 2012, BlindSquare has already received several prizes and awards:

- GSMA: Global Mobile Awards 2013, Best Mobile Health Product or Service
- Apps4Finland 2012
- OpenCities App Challenge 2012
- The Finnish Information Processing Association: Best Product 2012

Please note: To use BlindSquare, your iCloud account has to be active so BlindSquare can access it to save your settings and places.

Continued use of GPS running in the background can dramatically decrease battery life.

Pros and cons of BlindSquare app for iPhone and iPad

BlindSquare app good for

This app is fantastic. Im a blind college freshman, and blind square helps me navigate the campus. My independent traveling has become much more reliable. lol
This app is very user-friendly if your blind and its very affordable. I would recommend it for anyone.
I love this app! Really helps me feel that I know where I am traveling. Makes me very aware of my surroundings.
This application provides a travel freedom for blind folks hitherto unknown in the total history of blindness. And its all provided by one person who before the developing blind Square had no experience with blind folks. This is truly amazing!
I have several navigational apps on my device,however this is by far my favourite. Great work guys!
Great app. The only problem Im having is when I go to switch to another language, the voice changes, but the text itself does not.

Some bad moments

BlindSquare is a good little app with great potential. I am looking forward to future updates. At the moment, I have to say, that there is one significant question: If I have got Around Me and can start a point-to-point navigation via Navigon out of the app, why do I need BlindSquare? - I think the app is perfect for newcomers to iOS devices as it combines Foursquare or Around Me and Ariadne GPS in one app. I like the idea and look forward to new features in coming updates. 1.) I would be happy about a point-to-point navigation and 2.) I would be happy if FourSquare was embnedded more than just with the check-in feature. Good work so far!
User interface is very straightforward. Looking forward to next version and added features. A bit pricey for what it appears to do as of now
This app is trying to be a better version of around meGPS, and my way However, it is doing none of them really well. This app reads to you in a non-voiceover voice locations nearby. It does a good job of using the foursquare database to find locations that are near you. However, the filtering, targeting, and other features are hard to get at. Especially, when the app is reading to you. Also, its integration with voiceover is poor. The volumes of voices can be different, they can be reading at the same time, and other problems come up. In short, the app is hard to use, uses an unnecessary voice, and is not doing what is been designed to do. We should wait and see what happens next but this is not worth $12 right now
Although the application isnt perfect I do believe the developers making every possible effort to make improvements based on user feedback. The application should be able to offer a lot of great information to individuals who are blind or visually impaired.
I have only good remarks about this app.After trying it out, I was amazed by its audible announcements of locations. It even detected some of the buildings on my college campus, which impressed me very much. Fantastic work!
If you use this with navigon or tomtom youve pretty much got yourself a fully accessible gps sollution for your IOS device. I kid you not! Gotta love the capability of multi-tasking. This is where it actually is critical to have.

Usually BlindSquare iOS app used & searched for

blindsquare, blind square, and other. So, download free BlindSquare .ipa to run this nice iOS application on iPhone and iPad.