Problem: Info monitors on the back of seats in airplanes provide nice-to-have information, such as total flight time, time till destination, and nearby locations on the ground. These monitors are often visual-only, assuredly to not disturb nearby guests, but this makes them inaccessible to the visually impaired. Converting this information to audio inside earbuds or headphones would be an easy and unobtrusive fix.
Solution: Because these headrest monitors already have audio jacks, reusing them to communicate this information would be easy using established screen reading tech or more elegant selection methods beyond a touch screen. This introduces the difficulty of limiting audio, and potentially distracting from important announcements. This leads to the second possible part of this assignment: making often garbled announcements more understandable for those hard of hearing with this audio jack. More or less, this all boils down to an interruptable info stream of important flight info.
Solution: The solution is simple, two psuedo-threads of audio, switchable between with a button press simulating a pilot or flight attendant’s announcement. The “information” like distance to destination is simulated with a tone from a pot right now, since I have no idea about playing samples yet. Being interruptable lets any outside announcement alert the user to plug in and listen, actually give them the info, or more.
