The app features include an interactive tactile “Rumble map”; audio descriptions of key features of an eclipse; a play-by-play description while a solar eclipse is happening if a solar eclipse is happening in the user’s area; and a countdown clock to the next upcoming solar eclipse.

The “Rumble Map” gives the user the sensation of “feeling” the Sun during an eclipse. Our technology translates images of key eclipse features into a series of unique frequency modulated tones that map out variations in light and dark as the user explores the image with their fingertips. These tones are specially designed to make the user’s mobile device shake, or rumble, in response to the changes.

After the eclipse, the Eclipse Soundscapes app will provide access to educational and interactive eclipse information. During the next five years, the app will expand to include other eclipses and astronomical objects of interest giving people who are blind and low vision – and everyone else – a new way to engage with the universe around them.