Presenter:
Brandon Biggs, Founder and CEO of XR Navigation.
Startup:
XR Navigation is making Audiom: The world’s most inclusive visual, auditory, and tactile digital only map viewer.
Transcript
[00:00 – 00:56] Brandon Biggs
Hello, my name is Brandon Biggs and I am the CEO of XR Navigation. Both my cofounder, Chris, and I are blind, which means we’ve never had access to digital geographic information. But most geographic information is presented exclusively in the digital format. This means that we, along with the 285 million blind individuals in the world, have never had access to information on weather maps, voting maps, or more crucially, evacuation maps. Last year, during the wild fires in California, I had no idea where the fire was to know if I should evacuate, and if so, where to, because I couldn’t see the map. The Americans with Disabilities Act says every public website needs to be accessible. But here is my experience with the 99% of maps on the web today with my screen-reader.
[OO:56 – 01:02] Computer
Clickable show street map radio menu item check submenu. Out of menu bar nav clickable. Blank. Blank. Blank.
[1:03 – 1:49] Brandon
The other 1% of maps use a text alternative, such as tables or turn-by-turn directions, that completely remove the geographic information that makes a map a map. – Can you imagine looking at a map and only seeing turn-by-turn directions? We couldn’t. So we invented Audiom, the world’s most inclusive digital, visual, auditory and tactile map viewer and editor. Audiom can either supplement or completely replace existing mapping solutions with only a few lines of code. Our patented auditory and tactile solution allows blind users to freely access geographic information by moving a character around the map with their arrow keys or other controller, very similar to a game.
[1:49 – 1:53 Computer]
Blank space, 27 44.
[1:53 – 3:07 Brandon Biggs]
This allows users to understand the spatial relationships between locations. Whether you’re trying to find the bathroom at a football stadium or wanting to know COVID cases in nearby states, Audiom allows blind and sighted users to fully access geographic information. We currently have three paying customers that represent our initial customer segment of businesses, governments, universities and colleges with a blind population and who lack the infrastructure to allow them to navigate their campus. Legislation and legal action are at an all-time high around digital accessibility, costing businesses and governments billions of dollars each year. We are proud to be the first inclusive map viewer on the market, and thankfully for our customers, onboarding to Audiom only requires an initial implementation and yearly licensing fee. Our team is mostly blind and has decades of experience in the blindness and assistive technology-related startup space. I am getting my PhD on non-visual mapping with one of the most renowned sonification researchers in the world. If you would like to learn more, we would love to talk with you about making the world more inclusive. Thank you.
