ChatGPT helps blind people in travel planning

I was curious if ChatGPT has any ways to help with travel planning that I couldn’t do with any other tools, so I put it to the test. I tried a few things where I had challenges previously, and overall it was able to help me in two specific ways: finding more efficient ways to get to places, and finding more accessible activities.

Complex travel planning

One of the biggest challenges I have when planning my trips is getting to places with limited or no public transportation. Recently I was planning to attend a conference and ultimately I decided not to go because I couldn’t figure out how to get there other than driving. There are times when Google Maps simply says that there are no transit options, or the trip is unreasonably long. Once I had to work at a location where Uber was limited, the nearest bus stop was far, the closest airport was 50 miles away, so I could only get there by train. However, the four hour car ride would be 16 hours by train because I had to take a big detour. I ended up hiring a car service which was more expensive than flying to the other end of the country.

ChatGPT was able to find me a bus company which Google Maps didn’t offer at the time. Then I tested the conference location I didn’t go to and I got the same results, I was offered a bus company I wasn’t aware of before, today I would decide to attend the conference.

Of course, it is possible to plan these trips by piecing them together, finding nearby towns, calling bus terminals, contacting local people and bridging the gaps with Uber or taxi rides.

The difference was almost like asking someone who knows all the options and shortcuts. Instead of trying different options for hours, I got some suggestions and I just needed to verify how accurate they were. In practice, I was able to piece a trip together in a few minutes. I could even ask for lowest price, or shortest time options.

Some of the recommendations didn’t make sense though, for example for a location it offered me a flight from Cleveland to Pittsburgh, where in reality there isn’t such a commercial flight. In general I found that when a recommendation was more specific, for example taking Amtrak from A to B was more likely to exist than a suggestion such as take a bus from A to B.

I would say the majority of my trips are easy to schedule, except those few where driving seems to be the only option according to online maps.

Accessible activities

Another challenge I often face when traveling is finding entertainment which is fully accessible, or at least better than average. Of course, I can visit a museum, but the question is if I will be able to enjoy it, or will everything be behind glass. Of course, I can schedule an individual tour, but I will talk about that in another post. However, when I used ChatGPT to create an itinerary for a city for example for three days, it included options where they had audio tours or things to touch, such as architecture or statues.

Usually vacation planning takes me a few days, ok, I love it with a passion, but at the end of the day, it tends to be a hit or miss experience. I put this to the test again, and I doublechecked a trip that we took to Fort Lauderdale with the family last year. It gave me suggestions for audio tours that I wasn’t aware of at the time, and today I would include it in the plan.

Let’s look at some examples:

I asked for suggestions nearby, and I got the following:

“Lake View Cemetery: This cemetery is a beautiful and peaceful place to stroll and take in the scenery. It features several notable gravesites, including those of President James A. Garfield and John D. Rockefeller. Visitors can use audio guides to learn about the history and significance of the cemetery.”

Notice that the first recommendation was to take in the scenery. Well, not the most blind-friendly activity I have heard of, but before dismissing it altogether, I was happy to get a thorough description, because the scenery can be equally important when I want to plan a trip with the family who would enjoy it much more than I would. However, I have lived here for a long time, and I had no idea that the cemetery does have an audio tour, something to try out this summer.

Some recommendations were quite generic, I often read that you can feel the texture of the walkway, which is true, but unless there is something very specific about it, it is true to every walkway.

There were also other places, when it didn’t offer the obvious option. I created a five day itinerary for Madrid, testing if it will offer the Museo Tiflologico, and it didn’t. But overall, I ended up with great ideas which I either wouldn’t have found, or could have taken a long time to get to.

How to find accessible activities?

I started out by asking for recommendations for blind people. But immediately I knew that it is not going to be necessarily specific enough. There is no way to know how ChatGPT defines activities for blind people, even if you get a definition of blindness, which it may or may not use. Not to mention that different blind people will find different things interesting. But it was a good start, and generally I got good recommendations. It was overdoing it a little, and tried to weave accessibility into everything, for example it gave me restaurants with accessible dining options. Whatever that means. I found that for the most part I didn’t get recommendations which had nothing to do with blindness specific accessibility, for example concerts and beaches.

Then I started adding more parameters, such as finding options which are available using public transportation and short Uber rides. Then I organized the events by minimizing travel. This gave me a much more reasonable plan.

Ultimately, I found that if I planned my next trip with ChatGPT, I would get two itineraries: one in general, and one with accessible options. Then I would give it a list of things I would like to visit, and ask to plan the most optimal rout.

Conclusion

I was happy with the experiment. I will not give up the old way of trip planning, there is a place for accurate and up-to-date schedules, which ChatGPT will not provide, However, from now on it will be part of my planning toolkit.

I’m sure there are other ways of using ChatGPT for trip planning, and I will keep exploring and will update this post as I find new options. But this is a great start.

I’m curious, have you found any ways to use AI for accessible trip planning? Let me know in a comment, I’d love to hear how others use it.