BlindSquare — Accessible GPS Navigation for Blind and Low-Vision Users

Finnish developer Ilkka Pirttimaa created BlindSquare in 2012, combining a smartphone's GPS with Foursquare and OpenStreetMap data to speak nearby points of interest, intersections and directions aloud, letting blind and visually impaired users build independent mental maps of unfamiliar streets.
Documented by the European Commission's AccessibleEU centre and data.europa.eu as Finland's flagship accessible-navigation product, the company and multiple press sources describe it as the world's most widely used accessible GPS app, with 60,000+ users across 186 countries in 26 languages as of the mid-2020s.
In April 2026, BlindSquare partnered with Coco Robotics, whose sidewalk delivery robots (roughly 1,000 operating across the US and Europe) detect obstacles such as misparked e-scooters and construction sites; BlindSquare now relays that real-time hazard data to users audibly before they reach it, as reported by Fortune and PRNewswire.
User and country figures are company-reported rather than independently audited, and no controlled outcome study (e.g., measuring navigation errors or independent-travel gains) was found; the Coco Robotics hazard-alert feature is newly launched (2026) and its real-world reliability has not yet been independently evaluated.

Read the full analysis: https://www.blindsquare.com/