Giovanni Luca Ciaffoni
Version 4.0 - August, 9th 2013
Please note: Version 4.0 introduced some significant changes. The parts of this manual describing these changes are marked by the heading "New in version 4.0".
Ariadne is an iOS app that aim to help blind people in their mobility task using the location system embedded on iOS devices, the map service and the voice over screen reader.
It is not a navigator such as other commercial navigators in the sense that id does not give turn by turn direction, you can’t give it an address and make it drive you there. Nevertheless it can be used in conjunction with other commercial navigators.
You can use it to get informed on your current position, to know your position relating to waypoints that you previously stored in the app archive or seeing what’s around you looking at the map. More on this in the next paragraph.
Ariadne has three main features, each one aimed at improving the location awareness and the comprehension of what’s around the user or what’s around a certain point, in terms of streets, cities, areas of interests, etc.
The app can tell at any time information about your position. It can do that automatically, at fixed intervals or manually, by explicitly querying the system. Voice over will pronounce different amount of details depending on whether the information is given automatically or because you asked the system. In the former case the app will only tell what’s changed from the previous message, e.g. if you are moving on the same street and the house number has changed the app will only tell you than number. If you explicitly asked the app it will tell you all the information about the address (street, number, city, etc. depending on your settings).
You’ll see how to do this in the Home screen section.
One of the most useful functionality of the app is the ability to bookmark favorite points, such as bus stop, train stations, as well as shops, house doors, etc. and be alerted when getting close to them.
The user can save a point at any time just tapping on the Add favorite button. If an internet connection is available the app will fill in the fields with the address, otherwise only the coordinate and the description entered by the user are saved.
The alert mechanism can be customized in terms of distance for the alert, sound, voice over, etc. (further information on the Favorites section).
Favorites can be shared with other users.
The map exploration is the innovative feature of the app. The user can put their finger on the screen, where a map is shown and the system will pronounce the name of the object they are touching (city, street, country, depending on the zoom level).
This is a way to get an idea on the arrangement of streets, cities, etc.
Some hints are provided to help the user, such as the sound of water for rivers, oceans, two different sounds for the streets, etc.
Further details are provided in the Map Section.
At the bottom of the screen a tab bar is provided to let the user switch among the various section of the app.
This is the main screen of the app since from this screen the user can activate some important functions and can check values that are relevant when moving.
Following is a description of each part of this screen.
At the top there are three buttons, which, from the left are “Where Am I”, “Start/Stop Monitoring” and “Add to favorites”.
The Where am I button, if tapped, will send a query to the map service, asking for information on the user position. It will send the gps coordinates. The result is that when the information arrives, voice over will pronounce street name, house numbers, city, etc. depending on the user settings (see Settings, Monitor section).
Start/Stop Monitoring button will make the system periodically query the map service to get information on the user position. When the information arrives the system will not pronounce everything, but only those fields that where changed since the last query. If I am walking on a street, and I keep walking on that street, the information that will probably change from a query to the other is the house number, and that will be pronounced by voice over. When I turn to a different street, not only the house number will change, but also the street name, therefore both informations will be given by voice over. This is true for any information, city, country, etc.
The intervals at which the system gives those information are not regulars, since they depends on different things. First of all the interval set by the user for sending queries (see Settings, Query interval). That interval may slightly vary, depending on the system processor and it only is the query interval, the interval at which informations are give depends on the map service responsiveness. They also depend on the user position. If the user is not moving, the system won’t query the map service, since the answer would be the same.
It might happen that the map service doesn’t respond promptly, meaning that it doesn’t respond for more than a certain numbers of times. In that case the system will alert the user depending on the settings (see Monitor, Map service status). If “On screen only” is selected this information will only be on the screen, otherwise voice over will also inform the user when the server becomes unreliable.
The third button on the top of the screen is the Add to favorites button. It allows the user to save their current position at any time, provided that the gps position is valid. When tapped, this button opens a new view, with some fields related to the address and one in which the user can put their description. If an internet connection is available, then the system will automatically fill in the address fields, if it is not, only the informations given by the user are saved. If nothing is given, than the system saves the favorite only using the coordinates and putting “Untitled” in the description for the favorite.
The quickest way to save a favorite, such as a bus stop, is to tap on this button and when the detail view opens just tap on the Save button, which can be focused using a single flick to the right.
When saving a favorite, the detail view also report a value that is called horizontal accuracy (HA). The lower this value the better the accuracy of the coordinates. An high value means that it might not be worth to save the favorite, since the positioning system is not very accurate at the moment.
The favorite is saved using the coordinates the gps is giving when the user hits the Save button, not the ones given when the view is open.
That means that the user can open the view in advance, by hitting the button Add to favorites and then when the point is reached, save that with its coordinates.
If you do a long tap on the add to favorites button (for voiceover users it's a single tap followed by a long one) the app will automatically create a favorite using your current position and accuracy, without opening the Insert favorite window. If an internet connection is available the favorite just added will also contain information on the street, the number, etc. otherwise it will only contain information on the position and horizontal accuracy.
If you simple tap the button the add favorite view will open. This view has changed a bit since previous versions:
Besides setting the details using the text fields provided (such as description, streets, etc.), a table is provided on this screen to customize the favorite behaviour (such as distance for alert, sound, vibration, etc.).
The parameters for the alert can be also set by choosing among various presets. Three buttons are provided at the bottom of the screen:
Use preset button will open a list of possible configurations the user can choose to quickly set the options for the favorite. E.g. if they choose the configuration "Bus", the favorite will be set like this: No vocal alert, no vibration, "Street car bell" sound, distance: 200 meters, no repeat.
After that, the user can save the favorite or change these settings according to their needs before saving.
The update location button will update the position previously stored for the favorite (in terms of geographical coordinates) according to the current user location. This may be useful in case you opened the view long before being in the position where you store the favorite.
The update address will update the address according to the location stored.
The first object the user encounter after the Add to favorite button is a button that report information on the nearest favorite or the tracked favorite, if there’s one.
Normally, if you have at least one favorite in your list, this button reports the nearest one. It gives you a description for the favorite, if any, or the address, if any, otherwise it’ll report the word Untitled.
Sometimes you wish to track a specific favorite, instead of just having information on the nearest one. You can choose to track a favorite by going into the favorite detail and select the option Track (see Favorite section below).
In that case this button will report information on the tracked favorite.
From version 4.0 your favorites can be activated or not. Only active favorites will fire an alert when you get close to them. Any other non active favorite, even the tracked one, will not fire any alert.
A favorite is a point you previously stored in your archive. It's there for your convenience but it won't do anything unless you decide to activate it or track it. When you activate a favorite the app will fire an alert when you get close to it, according to the distance, sound, etc. you set for it. A tracked favorite is a normal favorite you decide to monitor while moving.
By using the nearest/tracked favorite button on the home screen the user can have information on the nearest favorite (among all the favorite they have in their archive), on the nearest active favorite, on the tracked one. Those information are shown on the following label.
By using this button the user can also reach two other useful functionalities: they can quickly get to the detail screen for the favorite (for VO users: double tap, second long on this button) and to the edit screen (double tap and then drag). These shortcuts may be useful if the user wish to quickly change some information on the favorite which is currently showing. Let's imagine you're waiting at a bus stop and you have a very good horizontal accuracy, whereas when you stored the favorite the accuracy was very poor. You can quickly get to the edit screen for the favorite and update its position by using the update location button (added in version 4.0).
The next label is the one that reports the distance and the angle for the favorite shown in the previous label.
When moving this label constantly updates with the distance and the angle. The distance is given in metrics or imperial units depending on the user settings (see Settings, Units section).
The angle is given in degrees (e.g. 40 degrees to your right) or as a clock indication (e.g. at two o’clock) depending on the user settings (see Settings, Favorites manager, Clock directions).
The angle can refer to the device orientation or the direction of movement. See “Understanding angles, compass and direction” section to understand this important distinction.
This label reports the direction of movement. If it is valid it’s just a number (in degrees), if it is not the label will say unavailable.
This label reports the angle read from the compass. It corresponds to the device orientation and will change when rotating the device. You’ll notice that by holding the voice over focus on the label.
This label is usually empty. It takes a value when you reach withing the radius of a certain favorite. This radius can be set within the settings section (Favorites manager, Distance for alert) and can change from 10 meters (33 feet) to 5 kilometers (3.10 miles). If you are on a train and would like to be alerted when reaching near a station, you should set the distance to more than 2 kilometers (1.2 miles), in order to have the time to be ready and get off the train in time.
For other purposes it might be useful to set shorter radius. Please consider that very short radius (such as ten or twenty meters - 33 or 66 feet) are not advisable since, because of the gps drifting, the system may not give any alert when reaching within the favorite radius.
This label reports the favorite description as well as the distance and the angle. The angle can refer to the device orientation or the direction of movement. See “Understanding angles, compass and direction” section to understand this important distinction.
According to the user settings (Favorites manager), the alert may also be given by voice over (“You are at about 150 meters from office at two o’clock, gps”), through a device vibration, through a sound and may be repeated one or more times at different intervals (see settings section for more details).
This label reports the address. It might or might not be updated.
When the user presses Where am I button this label gets updated with the address corresponding to the user position.
If the monitor feature is active (started), than this label is updated everytime a valid address arrives from the map service.
If the monitor is not active and the user hasn’t tapped the where am I button recently than this label is not updated.
This section contains seven different buttons divided in two lines, the first one relating to speed and position and the other relating to technical information such as gps, network and map service.
The buttons on the first line, starting from the left are:
The buttons on the second line, starting from the left are:
The following two buttons allow the user to explore the map with their finger. The first one directly opens the map of the area around the user position whereas the second one opens a form asking for details of an area to be explored. Further details on this feature in the map section.
The first screen is the list of favorites. It lists the favorites saved by the user or imported using one of the possible methods.
Each items of the lists contains the favorite description, the distance from the favorite and the angle. The angle can refer to the device orientation or the direction of movement. See “Understanding angles, compass and direction” section to understand this important distinction.
A search field can help in finding aspecific favorite.
When you open the list it is ordered by distance. The nearest favorites are the first in the list, the further ones are last in the list. When moving, the list doesn’t automatically updates. To force an update you can shake (while showing the list) your device. You’ll hear a sound that will let you understand that it was sorted.
This list can be either in normal or editable mode. When it is in normal mode, the action button on the top right of the screen shows an action sheet with two options, apart from the Cancel button.
To put the list in editing mode, the Edit button, at the top left of the screen must be tapped. In that case the multiple or single selection of each item in the list is possible. In editing mode the content of the action sheet that appears when the user taps on the action button is the following:
A confirmation is required to take any of these actions.
The trash action, doesn’t need explanation. When confirmed either all or the selected favorites are deleted from the archive.
Since from version 4.0 you have the possibility to activate one or more favorites and to customize them (more on this later), this section was reorganized in order to let the user select the set of favorites they wish to see. Three tabs are shown on the top, that can be used to select the corresponding subset of favorites (All, Customized, Active favorites). The search option will do a search on the selected sub set of favorites.
If the list is in normal mode, the action button will contain, besides the two options shown above (Create and Import from Loadstone), the following options, related to the selected subset:
If the list is in editing mode, besides the two actions shown above, you have the following (in case you selected some favorites):
All these options will give the user the possibility to apply the settings to a set of selected favorites (or all) and not to a single one.
The same options are given if the user tap on the action button after doing a search. The action button, on the top right of the screen, becomes "Action on search results" and can be used to apply an action to all the results of a search. Let's suppose the user searched for the word "bus" and a list with all the favorite containing the word bus is shown (e.g. all the bus stops). By tapping on the action button the following buttons are shown:
Any of this action will apply to all the favorites resulting from the search.
The share option lets you share either all or the selected favorites using an email message. When the option is chosen a mail message opens with a default subject, message and an xml file as attachment. The user just need to enter the recipient address and send the message.
When a message is received that has an attachment with Ariadne’s points (it has an .ardn extension) just open the attachment using Ariadne GPS (this is done by double tapping on the attachment, second tap longer). Ariadne will open and the list of favorites contained in the file will be shown. If you don’t want to import all of the favorites you need to select the ones you’d like to exclude.
When you are done just hit the Import button on the top right of the screen. The app will show a message with the number of favorites imported and some other details.
The selection of a favorite in the list will open a detail view, in which the favorites details are shown. Here are these details:
From version 4.0 the user have the possibility to set the distance for the alert, the sounds, the vibration, the vocal alert, etc. for each single favorite according to their needs. In the previous versions all these settings could be made in the Settings section of the app but they were made once and were the same for all the favorites. Now they can be set for each single favorite and can be different from each other. This can be useful for different kind of favorites, e.g. for a bus stop the user may wish to be alerted 200 meters (600 ft) before they get there whereas for a train station it might be worth to be alerted 1.5 kilometer (1 mile) before.
This was called customization and it can be done by editing a single favorite or in bulk, by doing a multiple selection or a search on the favorite list.
The favorite detail view is a read only view. To edit the favorite details an action button is provided at the top right of the screen.
Here are the options that the user is given when they tap the Action button:
This view will let the user edit the details of a previously stored favorite.
Besides changing the details using the text fields provided (such as description, streets, etc.), a table is provided on this screen to customize the favorite behaviour (such as distance for alert, sound, vibration, etc.).
The parameters for the alert can be also set by chosing among various presets. Three buttons are provided at the bottom of the screen:
Use preset button will open a list of possible configurations the user can choose to quickly set the options for the favorite. E.g. if they choose the configuration "Bus", the favorite will be set this way: No vocal alert, no vibration, "Street car bell" sound, distance: 200 meters, no repeat.
After that, the user can save the favorite or change these settings according to their needs before saving.
The update location button will update the position previously stored for the favorite (in terms of geographical coordinates) according to the current user location.
The update address will update the address according to the location stored.
One of the most innovative features of this app is the map exploration. By saying map exploration we mean that the user moves their finger on the screen, where a map is shown and they are told the name of the streets, cities, countries, they’re touching. When the map opens and a finger is put on the screen the user hears the word “map” and then, after a short while the names are beeing pronounced. This function requires and uses the remote map service, so a network connection must be available and the map service needs to be responding. If that’s the case the user is able to get an idea of the layout of the streets, the cities, etc.
The map may take some time to load, especially on slow networks. A sound is played when the map is fully loaded on the screen and the exploration can start.
The finger must be slowly moved, in order to allow a short interval for the server response.
Two different sounds are provided to help the user follow the streets. The one is played when a street is entered, the other when it’s left.
When the finger gets on a river, lake or ocean the sound of water is played.
The area shown can be changed by using the normal voice over gestures. You should imagine having a map under the device screen:
Depending on the zoom level you’ll get different details. You can explore from the streets of a single city to the States of the US.
The map can be open in many ways. Here they are:
The map view can be closed by shaking the iOS device.
Once a search has been done by using the Explore area function and the results are shown, the search criteria can be changed by using the Edit button on the top right of the screen. The form will open again with the last searched sentence.
This section lets the user customize the behavior of the app. There are five different sub-areas, each one being described in the next paragraphs.
This section relates to those information given when the monitor is active or when the user taps the “Where am I” button. The first seven are switches that allow the user decide which information are to be shown on the address label and are to be pronounced when the monitor is active. These informations may vary for different region.
This section holds options for the management of favorites, in terms of alerts, pointing, etc.
From version 4.0 the option set for the favorites in the Settings section act like general default settings, but they can be changed at any time for each single favorite (see above for details on how to do that).
The possibile options are:
The options in this section control the behavior of the map.
This section contains two views. The top one is for the aknowledgements and the disclaimer, also reported at the end of this manual. The bottom one contains information and news, taken from the web site at http://www.ariadnegps.eu.
The angles for the favorites, reported on many labels in the app can refer to the compass (device orientation) or to the direction of movement.
When we say device orientation, you can imagine a longitudinal axis that is oriented from the top to the bottom of your device.
You must also imagine an axis that connect your device to the favorite point. The angle between these two axis is the one that is given when the labels reports the word compass after the angle.
For example, if the label says “15 Km, 40 degrees compass, to your left” that means that the point is at 15 km and the angle between the two axis, the one that connects your device to the point and the longitudinal axis of your device is 40 degrees, actually -40 degrees, since the point is on the left of your device.
Please consider that this system uses the compass to determine the angle and although the compass is supposed to be well calibrated it might be subject to magnetic interferences and there might be an error, sometimes high enough to make the value totally unreliable.
This is an hardware limit. Please help yourself with some other information to determine if the compass is working properly.
To calibrate the compass you should describe an eight figure in the air, trying to keep your device oriented in the same direction.
When you are moving, or at least the system thinks you are moving (See next paragraph for details on this), the angles no longer refers to the device orientation, but to your direction of movement. In that case the label will report the word gps after the angle, since the angle is calculated using the direction of movement provided by the location system.
So, let’s imagine we are on a train and the system gives us this information for a favorite: “5 Km, 85 degrees, gps, to your left”.
This means that, if we are looking at the same direction the train is moving, the favorite is on our left at 85 degrees. Since 0 degrees is right in front of us and 180 is right behind us, 85 is almost in the middle.
When the direction of movement is quite stable, (meaning that we are actually moving and the value has been almost constant for a while) and the coordinates for the favorite are good (if we have taken it, we should have had a horizontal accuracy less than 15 meters), the angles the system provides for the favorites are accurate. The error is higher for closest favorites that further ones.
The gps system is subject to the drifting. This means that not only is our position (determined by the satellites), not accurate, but it also changes quite frequently, even if we are actually staying in the same place and are not moving at all. This is a limit of the gps system.
Due to this problem, the gps system can sometimes give the app a valid direction of movement, even if there shouldn’t be any direction of movement.
In that case the app give us the angle with relation to the direction of movement (gps), but the direction of movement is fake and so are the given angles.
If we are not moving the only valid favorite direction we can have is the one that uses the compass (device orientation), but how can we get that if the system thinks we are moving and keep giving us the gps angle?
There is an option, in the settings, Favorites Manager section, that says “Use compass instead of direction of movement to detect favorite direction”. If we activate the switch for that option, than the system will use the compass, even if there is a valid gps direction.
Two sounds are played respectively when the direction of movement becomes available or unavailable. You’ll learn and recognize them just checking the label for the direction of movement after hearing one of them.
There are many ways to stay in touch, get help and be informed on news about the app:
The features of this app are based on the gps service and on a remote server for what concerns the information about the position.
This information might not be accurate, due to the gps accuracy, which is generally below fifteen metres but in some cases can be few tens of metres and to the remote service, which might be unresponsive in certain moments (the app will tell you if that's the case).
The aim of the app is giving you an idea of your position and what is around you.
Please do not completely rely on it.
Using this app you agree that the author cannot be held responsible for any damages that may result from an improper use of the program.
This manual is going to be updated. Please always look at the on line version. If you downloaded it for off line reading, please check for new versions.
This is version 4.0, released in August 9th, 2013