Soundscape - an ecosystem opportunity

This year’s Tech for Good Summit was a good day for many different reasons, most of which you might expect, perhaps. Great networking opportunities, fascinating discussions and expert contributions from across the tech and third sectors.

One slightly unexpected outcome, however, was an opportunity to partner with PwC on its One Firm One Day volunteering initiative – a rallying cry across the company to encourage as many staff as possible to take advantage of some of their allotted volunteering time on the same day, the 19th May. PwC’s Cloud Centre of Excellence team was keen to find a way to volunteer not just their time, but their skills and experience too - to take part in an activity with the potential to have far-reaching and long-lasting impact..

We were delighted to be able to provide just such an opportunity in the form of a feasibility study to assess the potential to create a long-term future for a Microsoft Research project that has now concluded, but the output of which had been released under an open-source licence.

Soundscape is a spatial audio mobile app that makes it possible for visually impaired people to navigate their way independently around an urban environment. Features included the ability to preview routes in advance of a physical visit, save markers and do more than simply navigate from a single starting point, allowing the user flexibility in their day – in the same way as those without visual impairment take for granted.

We wanted to know if it would be possible to recreate the app using what Microsoft had been able to provide, what constraints and possibilities its architecture offered, identify potential running costs and look at what additional features could make a new version of the app even more useful.

Armed with a clear brief for the day and with contributions from the visually impaired community, including representatives of Guide Dogs UK, the Head of Assistive Technology at Fife-based visual impairment charity Seescape and an enthusiastic Soundscape user, our two PwC teams got to work on the technical feasibility assessment and focussed user research.

Six hours later we had answers – yes, it would be possible, yes, we could identify accurate costs and yes, there were even some enhancements that could be made that would make the experience even richer for those using it.

Great, you may say, but what happens next?

Well, firstly it’s important to know that there is a looming deadline – the app hasn’t been available in the App Store since the end of 2022 and the Soundscape service will be shut down at the end of August 2023. In the first instance, thanks to our discovery day with PwC, we know that we can reproduce the app in its current form and that is what we are aiming to do, with potential future phases being considered once we have established a stable baseline service.

Thereafter, there are many possibilities. At the moment, it’s only available on iOS, so creating a version for Android needs to be looked at, we need to establish how such an app can be sustained financially and we need to identify the enhancements that really would make a difference to users. With more than 33,000 downloads across five countries, it’s clear that we have identified a clear need for this technology to continue. With a worldwide community of 230 million people with visual impairment, the opportunity to create impact is very large - a tremendous incentive to all of the ecosystem participants to put their shoulders to the wheel and play a part in making it happen.

If you’d like to know more, or would like to be involved get in touch with us here…