You Can Go
I was ready to build. The solution was a person.
Yesterday I volunteered at Chiens Guides Paris for their "détente des chiens guides," a kind of off-leash playtime: visually impaired people bring their dogs to let them run free for a while. Volunteers guide the owner while the dog runs.
During the walk I asked another more experienced volunteer questions. How it all works. What the dog does. What the person does.
The dog does not read the light. The person listens for it. The dog decides if it is safe to move.
Most pedestrian signals make a sound: fast clicks for stop, slow clicks for go. That is how someone who cannot see the light knows what it is saying.
Except many signals do not make any sound at all.
I was standing there thinking: what if a camera in the person's glasses detected green, then played the equivalent sound? A small device. A solved problem. I was already designing it.
The volunteer was still talking. She said: when there is no sound, someone nearby usually helps. A stranger, a passerby: You can go.
That was it.
I had arrived ready to build. I left thinking about how often the answer is already there. A person. A dog. A voice from the sidewalk.
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