Host Mark Miller speaks with Brandon Briggs, CEO of XR Navigation, about his experiences and advocacy. Learn about:
- His work as an entrepreneur, researcher, inclusive designer, and developer.
- Map accessibility.
- The impact of XR Navigation.
- How Audium, the world’s more inclusive digital map viewer and editor, is changing lives.
About Brandon Biggs
Brandon Biggs is an entrepreneur, researcher, inclusive designer, developer, and life-long learner. He is the CEO of XR Navigation, an Engineer at the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute, Co-Founder and board treasurer at Sonja Biggs Educational Services Inc., and a PhD student at the Georgia institute of Technology. In 2016, he received his bachelors in music from California State University East Bay, in 2019 he received his masters in Inclusive Design from the Ontario College of Art and Design University, and in 2021, began his PhD in Human Centered Computing from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is almost completely blind from Lebers Congenital Amaurosis (LCA). His projects and ventures center around building tools to solve some of the most difficult problems in the blindness field. He leverages his lived experience coupled with human centered inclusive design principles to create solutions that create lasting and sustainable impact. To achieve this goal, Brandon is half entrepreneur and half academic.
About Audiom from XR Navigation
Audiom from XR Navigation is the world’s most inclusive digital map viewer and editor. Audiom can be fully accessed visually, auditorily, and through text on any platform. You can access Audiom through headphones, a screen, and or a braille display. Typical geographic maps are read as “blank” to blind users which is not helpful or accessible. Turn-by-turn directions, tables, or other kinds of alternative text remove the spatial information that makes a map a map. Audiom can be placed alongside an existing visual map to make it accessible. It can also completely replace an existing inaccessible map viewer. It runs on the same geographic data that the visual map runs on. Audiom is 508, 504, ADA, and Web Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) AAA compliant. It can bring this compliance to any existing visual only map. Audiom shows maps for data analytics (thematic) and navigation maps (referential). Audiom has been used for showing referential maps like campuses, exhibit halls, airplane seat maps, and buildings. It has also shown thematic maps like eclipse and disease maps.
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Links of interest
Brandon Biggs has many talents. You can find out more in all the links below: