Tune Map

Most of city infrastructures in ASEAN, including Indonesia, are inaccessible. Without adequate assistive technologies development to support their independent mobility, visually-impaired youth are facing many difficulties to pursue more productive life. Meanwhile, according to ILO, the social and economic exclusion of disabled people would create 3-7% loss to gross domestic product.

Tune Map is a mobile platform designed to solve it. Tune Map allows citizen to contribute their suggestions on route they deem the safest by uploading pictures of obstacles they found on the sidewalks. This information will be used to navigate people with visual impairment as well as to enable data-driven decision making for local authorities. Tune Map fills the gap that existing maps cannot by providing information about route accessibility. We believe that by focusing to the underserving group, we will eventually benefit all the people. With Tune Map, leave no one behind.

Indonesia has the second highest rate of people with blindness in the world, with around 1.5 percent of the population, or 3.5 million Indonesian, listed as legally blind. Unfortunately, there are so many barriers exist in cities where they live such as motorbikes parked on the sidewalks, potted plants, holes in the sidewalk, no step-free access, and uneven ground. With this condition, people with visual impairment are facing difficulties to independently go to school, training center, or workplaces. In other words, the unsafe environment hinders them to pursue more productive life.

Without adequate assistive technology and inclusive accessibility of the built  environment, people with disability will continue to experience mobility restrictions and it becomes critical when they interfere with participation particularly in social, civic and community involvement and, consequently, dependence on others. Whereas, The World Health Organization stated that an individual’s participation in those activities are important to increase and maintain their quality of life.

Tune Map exists to solve this problem. By crowdsourcing information about city accessibility and enabling local authorities to make data-driven decision making about infrastructure maintenance, Tune Map is trying to bring people together to play an active role and build partnership to create inclusive cities. 

In 2010, WHO stated that around 285 million visually-impaired people live in this world and about 63.4% of them are living in Asia Pacific region. As the world’s population increases, more people will live in cities including people with visual impairment.

Since the beginning of Tune Map development, we mainly use design thinking and lean start-up methodology to design and implement our project. We have been working closely with visually impaired community in Bandung and Jakarta to define features needed by them. One of our beneficiaries stated that technology has became their basic need, that through internet they can “see” and interact the world. This one of the reason why we chose internet-based assistive technology to fulfill their mobility needs. We believe that through this tailored mobility solution for people with visual impairment, it will increase their participation, well-being as well as inclusion. Further, we continuously do feedback testing for each feature we have launched to ensure that it brings impact for our beneficiaries. 

Tune Map is a mobile platform to crowd-source information about city accessibility and navigate people with visual impairments. Tune Map enables pedestrian to report inaccessible pavements and facilities within the city by uploading pictures of the obstacles. The shared reports then will be analyzed to inform people with visual impairment and empower our local governments to do data-driven city improvement as they will be able to figure out which route that should be fixed urgently. In return, sighted-user will gain certain points for each report they submitted through Tune Map. Those points can be redeemed towards products from local business as a way to do CSR or promote their products and services.

With Tune Map, we want to easily enable crowdsourcing effort to maintain city accessibility and help visually impaired people through their daily-used smartphone. Our app is designed to be user-friendly for both the sighted users and people with visually impaired by implementing alt-text. In the heart of our technology is the ability to provide our location based data around our users with high precision. As our data scattered around cities, we use our custom data analytic tools to explore and extract meaningful insight and to identify urgencies. Our technology helps us to understand the obstacle pattern and provide meaningful insights for the authorities who are responsible for city accessibility.

Tune Map promotes digital advocacy which allows citizens around the globe create a safe and accessible urban environment by participating in monitoring as well as in data collection. Through this app, we bring people together to play an active role to create inclusive cities and convey the message that that accessible environment, while particularly relevant for people with disabilities, has indirect benefits for a broader range of people including themselves.

If we take a closer look at Indonesia, assistive technologies development is still scarce. A significant strength of our project is that it leads in mainstreaming a better understanding towards the impact of internet-based AT for mobility on users’ participation in daily life. Tune Map also combine technology and social mission to design a better intervention which are both meaningful to users and cost-effective.  

Tune Map fills the gap that existing map could not provide that is information about route accessibility. We offer an engaging platform for sighted pedestrians to participate in urban planning monitoring. We give each of them points which can be redeemed towards products from local business.

Another notable aspect of Tune Map is we are trying to bring people together to play an active role and build partnership to create inclusive cities. The idea of enabling government with data-driven decision making and do co-branding with local business are efforts to show that innovative business model could sustain diversity and inclusion.

Currently we are developing Tune Map on Android Studio considering the fact that Android-based devices are mainly used in Indonesia and most of ASEAN countries. In addition, we use design pattern of model–view–viewmodel (MVVM). For analytics, performance monitoring, and crash reporting we utilize Google firebase and fabric. We also use Google Maps API for location tagging. Another important aspect to mention is Alternative Text (Alt-text) which makes this app accessible for people with visual impairment. We make sure that every labels on our app can be read by TalkBack or VoiceOver on iOS. Our data dashboard was built using PHP language, Laravel framework, Highcharts, DB PostgreSQL. We also use custom data analytic tools and visualization such as heatmap.

With current technologies that we use, Tune Map can also be used outside Indonesia. It has been tested in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), Tempe (AZ, USA), and London (UK). 

At the moment, we have 60 visually impaired tried our app and more than 350 sighted users from our beta. 97% of our sighted users stated that by using our app and joining our awareness campaign, their awareness and knowledge about accessibility and disability has increased. Our visually impaired communities also stated that by joining Tune Map they have more confident walking in the city. 

We will have at least 100 visually impaired users and 1k sighted users to register in our app in one year. We hope we can reach 1k users of visually impaired people in five year and 5k sighted users in five years. We hope that our visually impaired users can be more empowered and have access to all public facilities safely. 

Our goal is to increase independency of visually impaired by using assistive technology that is developed by Tune Map. This goal needs to be supported by having accessible facilities for all. We want Tune Map could be used in several cities in Indonesia so that the cities in Indonesia are more accessed by disabled people. If a city is accessible for all, all people, including disable people could have more opportunity to access education, public spaces, workplaces, etc independently so they can contribute more to economic life. 

Thinking about designing an app for visually impaired people seems like a daunting task. Additionally, in ASEAN Countries, the app that is focusing on assistive technology is still limited. This is why we need to spend a significant amount of research to ensure that visually impaired users would succesfully utilize Tune Map in daily life. 

Another barrier is coming from our financial side. We are only using Grant Funding to support our project, that is why we could not hire developers full time even though our part time developers are highly committed. Meanwhile developing technology product needs a back-and-forth process. 

To overcome the first barrier, we are working closely with visually impaired communities since the beginning of our product development. It has helped us to make our research goes smoothly. As for the second barrier, we have utilised online communication to make the project on time and on track  while looking for another grant or seed funding opportunities for us. We are using what we have the best with minimum effort with maximum outcome to overcome financial barrier. 

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3 full-time staffs, 5 part time staffs , and 1 freelancer.

Our team consists of people with different background which makes Tune Map enrich with different perspective. 

• Architecture and Urban Planning Design : this knowledge makes us know how facilities for disabled people should be designed ideally and universally. 
• Hospitality and Psychology Background : this knowledge makes us know how to give excellence service to our communities and our business partners. Additionally, by having psychology background, we can do more research about our users and understand them deeper. 
• Geology Background : By having a geologist in our team, we know how to map properly and correctly. 
• Professional in Technology Development and UI/UX : Our developers have enormous experiences in developing several mobile apps, and have done some research in assistive technology. Therefore, we believe that we can build a technology that can be accessed by all, including blind people.
• Professional in Data Scientist : Our data dashboard is really important for us. We believe that we can analyse our data so that our data can be useful for blind people and government.    

We are partnering with 

1. ITMI (Ikatan Tuna Netra Muslim Indonesia), Wyata Guna Foundation, Mitra Netra as Visually Impaired Communities Organisation. We are working closely with visually impaired communities to develop right technologies and solution for them. We constantly ask feedback to them and always ask them to join our campaign if any.
2. Open Data Bandung and Public Works Agency as Government Bodies. Though official agreement has not been made yet, we provide useful data for government so the government know the insight of our data in regards pavements facilities. We give them a report twice a month so they will know which routes that needs to be fixed urgently.
3. Esgotado as Reward Providers. Esgotado as local business has helped us in providing rewards for our users. They give free or discounted products to Tune Map and give it to our Top Reporters once every two months.  

In short, Tune Map app has two users : sighted users and visually impaired users. We offer filtered accessible map for visually impaired people where the data is provided by crowd-source information from sighted users. As we offer the app for free for them, our customers will be different from our users. Our customers will be governments who will use our data dashboard to monitor city's improvement about walking facilities, and businesses who will use our platform to do their CSR and provide rewards to our users. Additionally, the business can also gain positive image and tap new markets by reaching disabled communities. Another revenue stream is from Accessible Training Service available for businesses and governments.

As we offer our app for free to our beneficiaries, we approach to another market to be financially sustained. Here is what we have planned and it will be deployed after we have our visually impaired app ready.

• We offer data analytics service for the government. In Indonesia, government do not have any digital data about accessibility rating of public facilities for disabled people. 
• We offer location-based ads to restaurant, shopping center, bookstore, etc, so their company logo can appear in our filtered accessible map. 
• As we have sighted users as data inputters, the company can provide our users rewards. They can do co-branding through Tune Map, and the rewards they provided can be discount vouchers to buy they product or giveaway. They only need to pay administration fee to Tune Map.
• We offer assistive technology and accessibility training and review to companies that want its technology to be accessed by visually impaired people as well as companies that want to be fully accessed by disabled people can come to Tune Map to be reviewed or trained. 

In the future, we need to raise investment capital to be able to provide navigation indoor services in public spaces, so all places are accessible for all people, including disabled people. We need to buy beacon technology to be able to provide this kind of services, therefore, we need to raise investment capital. 

We want to connect with Solve's Global Network and meet with potential partners who are developing innovation for disabled people. We want to connect with them as we want to exchange knowledge and learn from each other. We are looking for technical advice as assistive technology in ASEAN is still limited. Additionally, we also hope to have access to financial support through SOLVE's network and support. 

Organisation that is focusing on creating technology for disabled people especially visually impaired people. Additionally we want to learn about Machine Learning to automatically classify data so we hope we could meet organisation that is focusing on that project. 

In the last two years, we have received supports from various organizations from both in and outside ASEAN such as:

1. UNDP & Pulse Lab Jakarta http://www.id.undp.org/content/indonesia/en/home/presscenter/pressreleases/2016/09/20/young-innovators-present-ideas-to-address-urban-issues.html

2. National Information Society Agency (NIA) of South Korea

3. Open Data Institute (ODI), UK https://theodi.org/organisation/tune-map/

4. UN Volunteers Asia Pacific https://www.unv.org/fr/node/3308

5. SAP Asia

6. ASEAN Foundation http://aseanfoundation.org/blog/tune-map-s-swift-headway-in-empowering-indonesia-s-visually-impaired-community

7. Tech in Asia Jakarta https://www.techinasia.com/7-startups-caught-eye-tia-jakarta-2017

8. YSEALI SEEDS FOR THE FUTURE https://culturalvistas.org/ysealiseeds/

Tune Map will use this grant to develop an asssitive navigation platform for visually impaired users. At the moment, we have not finished in developing that platform as we only use 3 developers. Those 3 developers need to do research and coding at the same time. Therefore, we need additional resources to escalate our product development for visually impaired communities. Additionally, we have plan to develop Machine Learning for our data dashboard to help us in analysing our collected data. This Machine Learning System can automatically classify data and detect duplicate data as at moment we do it manually. This is to encourage our urban communities that have been submitted their report to Tune Map to keep on reporting through our platform as we have analysed their data using advance technology.