by Joe Lonergan
When you are out and about as someone who is blind or has low vision there are occasions when you can get lost or not know your exact location.
You may have taken a wrong turn, or you could be traveling in a bus or taxi and just want to know where you are. Now with the help of technology, you can reassure yourself where you are at any given time.
Your iPhone and Siri can help! Hold down the home key or say “Hey Siri, where am I?”. Siri will respond with your location. You will get an option to share your location or open Maps.
If you want to share your location with a friend so they can navigate to you, you can say for example, “Siri, share my location with Mary?” Siri will respond with send your location to Mary, then follow the prompt and say yes to confirm. Now your friend has a message with a link they can click on with your current location’s address and Eircode.
If you are an Android user, you can say to the Google Assistant, “Hey Google, where am I” and it will give you your location. If you say to share your location it replies that the feature is no longer available but you do have a share option within Google Maps.
This is just another tool in the toolbox. You are never lost as long as you have your smartphone close to hand.