This App Will Allow Blind People to Experience an Eclipse
When a solar eclipse occurs on Monday, millions of people will gather around the United States to see the spectacle. However, for those with poor vision, enjoying the eclipse is a little more difficult. What do you do at a visual event when you can’t see? This is a question that astrophysicist Henry “Trey” Winter started thinking earlier this year when a blind friend asked him to describe what an eclipse would be like. His solution: an app that allows visually impaired people to experience eclipse with sound.
The app, available for iOS and Android, will offer real-time narration to users based on what the eclipse is doing in their particular area. This way, even if they cannot see what is going on, they will be able to hear a fairly accurate description of where they are in the country. Aptly named Eclipse Soundscapes , it was created in part thanks to a NASA grant.
The “Rumbling Map” in the app shows images of previous eclipses and allows users to touch them to experience what an eclipse might be like using sound. The dark areas of the image will be silent and the sunlight will make a hum. The device will also vibrate when touched: lighter vibration for dark spots and more intense vibration for lighter areas.
Clearly this is not a substitute for actually seeing an eclipse, but for the visually impaired, it is a step beyond just reading about the experience.
And this is just the beginning. After Monday’s event, the app plans to offer recordings of the eclipse, including audio recordings of how humans and wildlife react to the event, for future listening even if it’s not the day of the eclipse.
For example, changing lighting is likely to encourage nocturnal animals to move while daytime animals calm down in what the group calls a “false dawn chorus.”
Aside from Monday’s event, the group plans to collect more audio recordings of future solar eclipses, including one in Chile in 2019 and another in the US in 2024.