Tactile Traveling

I doubt whether any online maps are accessible.

I’m thinking about this late at night because I’ve found an old map. I kept it after graduating from high school. It’s a completely tactile map of the school, complete with parking lots. I have no idea why I’ve kept it all these years and even brought it to Chicago with me. But I’ve finally found it after tearing through nearly my entire apartment. It turns out that I brought a lot of things I don’t even remember packing from Florida. I’ve also found a yearbook from my graduation year.

I take the map out slowly. I marvel as it slides out from the bottom of a box I haven’t unpacked, even though I’ve been in Chicago for a year. It’s easy to see, displaying different buildings in different colors. Every inch is tactile. As my fingers trace the building’s outlines, classical music plays softly from my FM radio. The tactile map is epic simply because it’s the first I’ve seen in years.

The Web conveys everything to the blind via speech or braille. A screen reader reads everything on-screen when keyboard commands are entered. To the blind, the many different keystrokes we use to navigate are, just as a car is familiar to sighted people when they drive. We drive along the Information Superhighway with speed and confidence that are totally alien to some sighted people. The only sighted people I know of who can operate screen readers are AT (adaptive technology) specialists.

But I’ve never come across a fully accessible online map. On the Web, maps are entirely graphical. On sites like Google Maps, text options require us to know where we want to go and where we’ll be starting from. Sighted people can look at a print map and just explore, but we can’t do that so much. It certainly isn’t easy.

I’ve never used Google Maps since I use paratransit (a bus for the visually impaired). I don’t have to try to see my surroundings. All I need is an address, and the next day, a driver will take me there. I think that’s why I’m learning Chicago more slowly than most. I’ve let the internet dictate Point A to Point B, and I haven’t even wanted to explore or thought to try.

I’m not sure why I spend about an hour exploring my school map today. I feel every inch of the school, and I even find some buildings I had no idea were on campus. It’s so easy to explore this map. Everything’s laid out in front of me. All I need are my fingers and time. By contrast, when I try to search Google Maps, possibly due to my few attempts to use it, I’d need to use keystrokes I hardly remembered just to navigate around. It wasn’t as easy as freely exploring with my fingers.

When I go back online next month, this map will still be here, tucked away in my closet. It will remind me that sometimes things other than technology and the Web are more accessible. They don’t need downloads, installations, or even configuring. I only have to experience them.