Walking with a handicap and Technology
The blind singer and sportsman Serafín Zubiri is the first to try out the new gadgets that the project “The satellite Caminos” (El Camino de los Satelites) is trying out. This is a project though up by the Asociación Gallega de Empresas TIC (AGESTIC) and the Fundación Tecnología Social (FTS) with the support of Xacobeo 2010. Their plan is to make it possible for people with various handicaps to be able to walk the Camino.
This is a pilot test, Zubiri, that has walked the Camino seven times, did his first walk with Enrique Varela and José Mari Arrazola, president and vice-president of FTS. The 3 of them walked the 21,5 km and they could see how technology can help blind people overcome the difficulties along the Camino. As FTS says on Twitter “these technology gadgets has meet tour expectation“.
These gadgets vary from RFID tags in the walking stick with sensors in the road to indicate direction. Then they have a talking GPS receiver, electronic compasses, guides on e-books and sneakers connected to an iPhone.
This project will also use the social networks, and they have accounts on Facebook and Twitter.
In addition they are using a small gps device with no screen that weighs only 50g (called Kapten) that uses voice recognition and text to speech technology.
Their plan is to support 20 pilgrims during the Holy year 2010. There will be blind and deaf pilgrims as well as pilgrims with other handicaps and also a few that just are interested in technology. They will walk from Roncesvalles to Santiago using these gadgets as support.
The pilgrimage will be walked between the 2nd of October and the 1st of November 2010. The idea is that this will have some continuity, so this will be repeated every year.
The 20 places in the group will be selected in a casting. In January 2010 the website of this project will be opened, and the online visitors will be the ones selecting the lucky 20.
To sum up, what this is all about is to make the Camino de Santiago accessible to those that have one or more handicaps using technology.
