NearBy

Inspiration

Many times, visually impaired people find themselves unaware of the places around them and have great difficulty traveling to those places.

What it does

Using voice commands, visually impaired people can activate NearBy in order to gain easy access to general information about points of interest near them, and the safest routes to them.

How I built it

We used HTML and CSS to build our frontend and used Javascript in order to create the backend that interfaced with the Google Cloud Platform and the Google Maps API to retrieve the data.

Challenges I ran into

Interfacing with the Google Cloud Platform was a challenging task in Javascript, and interpreting the data we received was also complicated.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

We are proud of the use of the WebSpeech API and the SpeechSynthesis interface in order to use audio to interface with visually impaired users. In addition, this was the first time we hosted a website on Amazon Web Services.

What I learned

We learned how to work with and use asynchronous functions and Promises in Javascript. As a result, we developed an advanced understanding of multi-threaded functions and callback functions.

What's next for NearBy

Implementing NearBy into wearable technology in order to improve accessibility

Built With

• amazon-web-services
• css3
• google-cloud
• google-maps
• html5
• javascript
• speechsynthesisapi
• webspeechapi