A free, step-by-step call service that helps the blind and visually impaired is now available at the Daniel K. Inouye International Airport.
The Hawaiʻi Association of the Blind is sponsoring a one-year program that makes the professional call service Aira available to anyone at the airport.
Customers can call agents with Aira, who can direct customers to check-in counters, gates and other areas of the airport. The Aira app can be installed on users’ phones.
Ronald Flormata, technology chair of the HAB, is blind himself and said the only other form of assistance available at the airport involves getting escorted via wheelchair.
“I am personally totally blind, and normally … after getting off the car at the curb, I don't know where to go. I ask for a wheelchair to get me to the check-in encounter, go to the TSA checkpoint, then out, then go to the gate — everything on a wheelchair,” Flormata said.
The new program allows those who are blind or visually impaired to navigate the airport with some independence. Users can call an Aira agent as soon as they step out of the car to give them step-by-step directions to the gate.
“If you get off the car, your vehicle, you don't know where you get off. … Somebody drops you in the ocean and you don't know where to swim to,” Flormata said.
The HAB-sponsored program is free only at the airport. Aira is available to use outside the property, but at a cost to users.
Flormata hopes the program proves helpful at the Honolulu airport and that another entity — possibly the airlines themselves, who Flormata said currently pay for the wheelchair services — picks it up after the end of HAB’s one-year program.
