A Louisville startup recently expanded its services in a big way through a technology transfer agreement.
Using mobile scanner technology and digital maps, GoodMaps has developed an accessible smartphone application, GoodMaps Explorer, that helps blind and visually-impaired people navigate indoor spaces. Those navigation capabilities have now been extended to the outdoors after the company acquired the Sendero GPS mobile apps from Aira and relaunched them under the name GoodMaps Outdoors.
CEO Jose Gaztambide said San Diego-based Aira had acquired this technology a couple of years ago and it was essentially "sitting on a shelf collecting dust." Aira, one of GoodMaps' partners, is a tech company that connects people who are blind or have low vision with professionals who provide visual information on demand.
"In conversations with them, we really just laid out that we thought that we're the natural owner of that technology as it pairs really well with the indoor experience that we've already developed and are mastering," he said. "We asked if they would be interested in some kind of technology transfer and the answer was pretty quickly 'yes.'
"It was an area of accessibility that they did not master and did not want to master, but they really wanted to make sure that the technology went to good use and so it came together really quickly."
Gaztambide said there was a lot of functionality already built into the technology, but some work needed to be done. GoodMaps updated the code, launched an Android version of the former iOS-only app and made it free for users, as the previous technology was a subscription service so people had to pay for access.
"We made it free, which we think is really important both from a usage perspective and from an ethical perspective," Gaztambide said. "Why should people who are blind pay for the information the rest of us get for free?"
GoodMaps Outdoors has a handful of unique features that are not available in other GPS apps, such as accurate intersection announcements, transit integration, built-in route directions with detailed turning prompts and a bread-crumb waypoint route mode. You can read more about the platform here.
Moving forward, Gaztambide said the recently-passed infrastructure bill is a big deal for an accessibility-focused company like GoodMaps. The $1.2 trillion package includes a $1.75 billion fund — earmarked at $350 million per year over the next five years — to make transportation more accessible to those with disabilities.
According to a recent report from the Washington Post, roughly 25 million people in the U.S. report having a disability that limits their transportation options, which in turn, impacts their ability to be employed.
"A big chunk of that is very specifically as mentioned in some of the legislative intent language from Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Illinois) about making it so that anybody can navigate our transit systems," Gaztambide said. "That's an enormous opportunity for us."
In the meantime, GoodMaps is growing, having added three people to its team of 13 in recent months and plans to bring on another three staffers before the end of the year.
