Manoj Karingamadathil
Manoj Karingamadathil is a Kerala-based digital humanitarian, free software advocate, and citizen scientist. As director of the Sahya Digital Conservation Foundation and admin of OpenDataKerala, he promotes open access to biodiversity and civic data. An active contributor to Wikimedia, OpenStreetMap, and iNaturalist, he supports community-driven environmental monitoring and digital archiving/
Session
World-Map-Explorer is a web application that helps the visually impaired learn about the world and understand maps. It is a great pleasure to note that the application was developed by a group of students from the Computer Science Department of Sri Krishnapuram Government Engineering College in collaboration with Zendalona with support of OpenStreetMap Kerala Community.
This app, which can be used by both the visually impaired and the sighted, is based on the free software OpenStreetMap. This app describes the world based on audio cues with the help of a screen reader. Existing applications like Google Maps cannot be used with a keyboard. Therefore, the visually impaired cannot use map applications. They understand the structure of areas by swiping their hands through the lines and dots that stand out on the tactile map. They understand where a place is by waving their hands over the place name written in Braille.