Wayfindr receives £300,000 from Big Lottery Fund to help vision impaired people travel independently

Wayfindr has received £300,000 from the Big Lottery Fund, the largest funder of community activity in the UK. The Big Lottery Fund is responsible for giving out 40 per cent of the money raised by National Lottery players for good causes. Last year it awarded almost £713 million and supported almost 14,000 projects across the UK.
We will be using National Lottery funding to help transform and further develop our Open Standard by continuing trials in a range of environments (such as transport, shopping centres, and hospitals) across the UK. Our aim is to support the two million people in the UK who are living with sight loss to navigate indoor environments independently.
This is a great example of the charity sector and tech world coming together to use cutting-edge technology to improve people's lives.- Matt Hancock, Minister of State for Digital
The funding will also support the development of a software accreditation program, meaning that in the future, venues with accessible audio navigation will be able to certify that their systems comply with the Wayfindr Open Standard, approved by the International Telecommunications Union as ITU-T Recommendation F.921.
Furthermore, the funding will aid in the development of an online training course on audio navigation and the Wayfindr Open Standard which will be aimed at accessibility and wayfinding professionals, helping to ensure that as more and more indoor audio navigation systems are deployed around the world, they are made accessible for blind and vision impaired people from the beginning.
Wayfindr is a brilliant concept that could potentially have a huge impact on the lives of two million vision impaired people. The implementation of this digital tool will enable individuals to better engage with the people and places around them making them feel more connected to their community. We are delighted to award National Lottery funding to such an innovation.- Dawn Austwick, Chief Executive of Big Lottery Fund
Our team combines the digital product and user centred design expertise of ustwo, with the Royal London Society for Blind People’s 175 years of experience working with blind people.