A first visit was made to Ecuador in May 2017 in the three cities of Quito, Guayaquil and Santo Domingo in order to make a diagnosis of the rehabilitation structures for the blind and to consider training courses at the Cannes Blanches Électroniques and GPS. The three cities have a place of reception for rehabilitation for adults.
Guayaquil provides a high quality rehabilitation, while in Santo Domingo there was no professional trained in the teaching of displacement.
The trainings started in August 2017 in Guayaquil. Professionals from Quito, Santo Domingo, Guayaquil and 12 visually impaired people from these different cities met in Guayaquil in August to begin the training led by René Farcy.
The training was hosted by the children's rehabilitation center "Cuatro de Enero". The management has made available its bus as well as two teachers in addition to its locomotion instructor to ensure the logistics. We have been able to work in different contexts: the tourist sea passage and its shopping centers, the well-urbanized city center, the peripheral popular districts etc. Ten visually impaired were equipped with Tom Pouce 1. Two visually impaired were introduced to Urban GPS on an experimental basis to analyze how to manage an unknown route safely in the context of local traffic. The car traffic in Ecuador has its peculiarities nevertheless this one is manageable with some precautions. There are many single-lane roads and they do not have traffic lights, the dual-lane roads always contain fires that are rigorously respected because the offenses are sanctioned here by prison. We are far from fines and point losses. In such a context, we could see from the GPS that we could safely make unknown routes by using the "caps as the crow flies" to reach its final destination. The good reflex is to choose your options of way so as to take the maximum dual-lane roads to enjoy traffic lights. One-way journeys that are more complex to cross are only used for the purposes of the route. We hope to double the number of users soon and equip them with Tom Pouce 2.