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Device Helps Disabled Gain Independence

Tribune photo by JAY NOLAN

Mark Sheppard, HART Travel Trainer, is helping University of South Florida researchers develop technology to help people with disabilities travel independently using public transportation. The Travel Assistance Device sends a signal to the disabled person's cell phone when the bus reaches a designated stop.

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By RICH SHOPES

rshopes@tampatrib.com

Published: January 5, 2009

TAMPA - University of South Florida researchers have developed a technology using cell phones to enable people with brain injuries and other cognitive disabilities to use public transportation.

The Travel Assistance Device could give disabled people more independence and shift some disabled from paratransit service to regular buses to help transit agencies save money, the researchers say.

"Potentially, what we have here is something that can greatly improve the quality of people's lives," said Sean Barbeau of USF's Center for Urban Transportation Research.

The device uses the Global Positioning Satellite technology inside cell phones to track the disabled riders. When the rider's bus stop is approaching, the phone vibrates and a prerecorded message tells him to pull the cord to tell the driver to pull over at the next corner.

The CUTR team hit on the idea two years ago and tested it this past summer. The device has patents pending and the researchers hope to make the device available this year to Hillsborough Area Regional Transit.

Mark Sheppard, a travel trainer at HART, said the TAD worked without a hitch when tested with six college-age, cognitively impaired people a few months ago.

Sheppard teaches the disabled how to board buses, pay the fare and pull the cord. He usually tells them to look for visual clues, a large tree or brightly colored building, to figure out when to exit.

"That's the hardest skill, getting the timing down to pull the cord. There isn't always a bright pink building around," Sheppard said. "I've had to spend days and weeks repeating the trip with them."

The riders can't always count on drivers to tell them when to exit because HART cycles its drivers through its routes quarterly.

Gloria Mills, an advocate for disabled transit riders, said anything that helps the disabled get to work, the store or mall - thus giving them a measure of independence - is a plus.

"I think it has its uses, especially for people who have trouble remembering their destination and have to try to look out the window to see where they are," she said.

The software is free to users, though that might change when the system begins to be expanded this year.

Riders, or their caretakers, can download the TAD software from a password-protected Web site and load it onto their phones. The technology doesn't require anything other than a cell phone and a computer.

Two messages recorded onto the phone tell riders to get ready and then to pull the cord when the rider is near his destination.

"When they step off they are so elated with themselves," Sheppard said. "They want to be just like their peers and they don't want them to know they have a disability. When their peers see they can do this, it's like wearing a medal for them."

The team at CUTR still has to figure out exactly how to roll out the device and pay for its expansion.

The technology works with Google Transit, the online guide for bus schedules. That part is free. But the team will need cash from a foundation, business or government agency to build a computer network to support the program and to hire technical experts to answer users' questions.

HART and CUTR haven't discussed the program's rollout.

Reporter Rich Shopes can be reached at (813) 259-7633.

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