Autour1.8.0 - App Store

Autour is an eyes-free mobile system designed to give blind users a better sense of their surroundings. Although other systems emphasize navigation from one specific location to another, typically accomplished by explicit turn-by-turn instructions, Autour uses spatialized audio to reveal the kind of information that visual cues such as neon signs provide to sighted users. Once users notice a point of interest, additional details are available on demand.

For a demonstration video please visit our website at : http://autour.mcgill.ca/en/

Requires iPhone 4S or later.

Version History Removed support for Google Places. Replaced Google Geocoding by LocationIQ geocoding for saying "you are standing at" in status. Maximum distance increased from 70 to 300 metres. OSM (alias OpenStreetMap) was the source of intersections, park shapes and large building shapes, but now it can also be used as a regular Place Data Source instead of FourSquare. Name of current mode is restated when you exit the main menu. The place menu now tells you the category of the place and, if you chose OSM Places, it can also tell you the website, the phone number and the opening hours if OSM has them, and Autour can dial the number or open the website. Screen sizes of the iPhone X models are now supported.

Bugfixes : Plugging stereo headphones after Autour was launched in mono mode now switches to stereo mode without restarting the app. Maximum radius of location error increased from 35 to 70 metres because iPhone 7 and later report much higher values than earlier phones. Intersection rendering is now always enabled, independently of whether the 'Services' category is selected. Fixed problem in which some devices continued rendering locations from the tutorial location after the tutorial was complete. Also fixed problem from iOS 13+ that prevented users from re-entering a given menu until restarting the app, and another iOS 13+ problem that froze the app if the menu was exited by swiping the page down. 1.8.0 12/07/2019 Place Menu wasn't pausing a Shockwave sweep. VoiceOver no longer says "selected" for the last menu item previously clicked. Menus now display correctly on wide screens such as iPhone 6 (with no effect on VoiceOver). Fixed a crash related to the detector for low battery, which was introduced in the last release and didn't affect iPhones older than 4S. Added a way to control the maximum number of places spoken per sweep, which was 15 and now can be increased up to 50. Help for Maximum Distance setting was very outdated, sorry. Lots more info was added about ICADE game pads in the instructions manual (and some more text in the settings menu). 1.7.1 04/20/2018 Autour can now be remote-controlled using ICADE game pads ! This works on both the main screen and for menu navigation, if the game pad has at least the four arrows plus the main four buttons. Go see 2 new settings about this in the settings menu, and consult instructions manual in the About menu. There is also a new menu called "Menu for this place", which lists actions that are relative to the last spoken place. You get it by swiping down from the main screen and it offers to go to Google Maps and Apple Plans, just as in the Other menu, except in this case it asks for directions to the specified place (even though the place is very close, it still helps some users). The setting for choosing upside-down use (neck pouch) now has an option so that tilting the phone is no longer used for switching modes (instead you can switch modes from the main menu or using a game pad button). A new setting allows to start sweeping or beaming as soon as you switch modes. History now sets cursor correctly when going forward past the end. Multiple-choice settings now say directly what is the current setting (instead of having to go back inside the chooser).

Meanwhile, on the server, a hundred more public transportation agencies were added. Those have been available since last summer, in all previous versions of the app. 1.7.0 01/25/2018 Corrected crash when abridging bus stop texts while using English language. Beam mode history no longer resets at every tick. Added setting for replacing metres by yards or feet. Place details (history) now tells you the address of a place if Google or Foursquare has it. GPS latency is improved. Foursquare ratings are now used for prioritising, partially. Meanwhile, on the server, a transmission problem for part of the accented characters has been corrected. 1.6.8 11/30/2016 Corrected freeze in tutorial that happened only on iOS 10. Now you are allowed to select French as the app's language when your phone's language is not French. Now you are allowed to select a different language for reading place names than for the rest of the text. Very long bus stop texts are no longer spoken unless you go hear details in history. Added headphone button interface. Summary of what's around you scans the whole circle instead of depending on the direction you are facing. Slightly reduced the startup time of the app.

Meanwhile, on the server, 490 new transportation agencies from around the world were just added on top of the 42 canadian agencies available until now. This covers much of USA and Europe. Agencies may vary heavily by how they name lines and directions, and so, we cannot guarantee that every bus stop text will make sense and will be as concise as it can. 1.6.7 11/05/2016 Fixed several causes of randomly-occurring crashes (large majority of the crash reports we've received). Beam mode now uses fixed ranges for sectors, to avoid duplicating places or missing places (as was the case when centring simply on the new heading of the user). Corrected excessive switching of beam when around the north direction. Added the names of some cardinal points just after the tick sound of the beam. Instead of saying how wide the beam should be in degrees, there is a setting for number of sectors that allows to divide a whole turn into 4, 8, 12 or 16 sectors. Added a setting for adjusting the rate of the non-VoiceOver voice. The warning about not being in Canada was removed.

Meanwhile, on the server, intersections and contours of parks (and of some building types) for the whole world were added, to the extent that OpenStreetMap has them (whereas Autour only had that data for Canada at the time of previous release). Be warned that OpenStreetMap might be missing some streets or names of streets, especially in some countries and regions, and Autour ignores intersections that don't involve at least one street whose name is known. 1.6.6 09/16/2016 Fixed various bugs and improved crash reports. Meanwhile, since previous version, the server database received all the streets, intersections and park contours in the whole United States, an update of those for the whole Canada, 4 more Canadian transit agencies (now 42 transit agencies). 1.6.5 08/23/2016 Added link to Google's privacy policy.
Added automatic switch to Foursquare if ever Google Places is not available. 1.6.4 07/26/2016 Fixed problem of having to restart the app to avoid bad sounds when plugging or unplugging Bluetooth headphones. 1.6.3 07/08/2016 Improved tutorial (bug fixes, new text, etc).
Also fixed bug that caused the app to forget that the tutorial had been completed.
Summary of places (double-tap) now spoken with a single voice, faster, as one sentence, sorted by number of occurrences of each category. 1.6.2 06/09/2016 Fixed crash while showing disclaimer on iOS 7.
But please see also the long list of changes of version 1.6.0. 1.6.1 03/14/2016 There have been very many changes since last release. Here is a quick overview :

* Added Tutorial mode, for a guided tour of the most important parts of the app.
* Instructions no longer read on startup, you have to go in About Menu.
* Instructions are more complete and you don't need to visit the web site anymore.
* Added Beam mode, a quick way to list places in a specific direction.
* Walking modes are now called Sweep modes.
* Stop-and-Listen mode is now Browse mode, and is no longer the default horizontal mode.
* Menu bar has been replaced by a Main menu.
* The status is now available from any mode, as double tap.
* Changed gestures of modes for actions Back/Forward/Start/Stop/Pause/Resume.
* Sweep modes allow going back many more nodes back in history of sweeping.
* Sweep modes can now "push forward", giving you the next place that a sweep would have told you.
* App now keeps running if you switch to another app (but stays quiet).
* Places may now get read when behind you.
* Added bus stops of cities Gatineau & Lévis.
* Fixed several bugs.
* Starting and stopping modes have their own beep sounds, and mode names are read when changed.
* Single sweep does not exist anymore, and continuous sweep resumes from the last place finished reading.
* Added 7 new settings (now there are 13). 1.6.0 03/09/2016 Repaired sound output on some devices such as BlueTooth soundcards.
Replaced settings menu by something more like iOS' Settings app.
Faster Google Places queries.
Added settings for setting maximum distance and also volume of sound effects.
iOS Status bar is now visible.
Street data now covers all of Canada (instead of half).
Transit agency data now covers 37 agencies (instead of 4).
No more tilting to switch between single and continuous sweep : make a long press on the screen to get continuous sweep.
Will report network problems whenever they happen.
Can select several categories of places at once in settings.
Stop&Listen mode can tell you whether you are inside a park.
Fixed various bugs. 1.5.0 09/22/2015 Fixed problems that had been introduced by last release (crashes ; information panel that was supposed to remain hidden). 1.4.3 03/08/2015 Fixed URL error in instructions.
Improved "waiting for GPS" mode. 1.4.2 02/28/2015 Initial release. 1.4 02/01/2015 1.3 08/09/2014