In Haute-Loire, visually impaired people hike in the heart of nature thanks to an application

The smartphone in one hand, they walk at a rapid pace listening to the indications of the free OpenWay application. These six visually impaired hikers are testing the Stevenson trail, a 270 kilometer long-distance hiking route. The voice of the GPS tells them the direction to follow. “The principle is like in aviation. You are in the middle of a clock. Noon is straight ahead of me. Three o’clock is to my right. Nine o’clock to my left. Six o’clock, it’s behind me. And as soon as I cross point 89, it automatically goes to point 90. So, I go from point to point”, explains Gérard Muller, blind and president of the Yvoir association, tester and co-developer of the Openway application.

OpenWay is a breath of fresh air for visually impaired people who want to move around on their own. It can be used both in town, by indicating an address, and in the countryside. On the other hand, for operation in the middle of nature, the user must digitize his route. The application then interprets the data. Regarding Stevenson’s path, it was the Yvoir association that digitized it. For nearly a week, the six hikers served as guinea pigs to improve the indications given by OpenWay.

It is one of the first major hiking trails to be mapped in this way by the app. If the objective is to allow the visually impaired to take advantage of the wide open spaces, the cane or guide dog is of course essential on these winding and steep paths. The group eventually covered 320 kilometres, 50 more than the Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson who popularized this hike. A longer course to avoid some too rough paths.