Promo Codes - MapsWithMe

I downloaded with the first promo code (WWFFJYFHLW69). This is a confusing app for visually impaired users, since simple offline map downloads by themselves aren't usable. When the app launches, you're on a screen with four labelled buttons: "location", "search", "downloader", and "bookmarks".  The "search" button lets you enter a search term, or select from points of interest like "food", "shop","hotel", etc. with a default selection of "Near Me" or else "On the screen" or "Everywhere". But this search invariably returns "No results found".  The "downloader" button takes me to a screen with a heading of "Download Maps" and a list of geographical areas in the world.  Since the description mentioned this app uses off-line maps, I navigated to "North America" and double tapped,  then to "United States of America", and then to my state, where the information was "touch to download". Double tapping brought up a button with the download size in MB, which I double tapped.

 After the map downloaded, I tried navigating back to the main screen, which is labeled "Maps", and tried the search button again.  This time selecting a search category with either the default "Near Me" or "On the screen" setting selected returned a list of POIs and their distances. However, there does not seem to be anything a VoiceOver user can do with this data, apart from knowing the distance to a Point of interest from a search of POI category or a typed in search term, because the primary interface seems to be a map screen that is entirely graphical, and provides no information to the VoiceOver user. And apart from the announced distance, there is no information on the direction of the POI with respect to the user, or any way of getting routing directions to get there. It might help the developer to understand what kind of information VoiceOver users make use of from GPS apps.  For example, in the Where To? app by FutureTap, which admittedly requires Internet access, a POI search by category returns not only the distance to the POI, but the direction as well (e.g., "slight right, 400 yards" or behind you "1.2 km", etc.) Furthermore, if you select the "Details" screen for a specific POI from your list of search results, and touch the upper right corner, the direction and distance information to the POI is live updated as you travel.  A feature like that for an offline GPS maps app, where the GPS location from your iPhone could be used to calculate and provide the direction and distance to a selected POI from the database, perhaps when the user shakes the device, would be genuinely useful to blind users, even without access the the map screen information, and might be within the scope of what this app might provide. Many map apps and GPS apps that use map data may provide VoiceOver users with  access to "pins" or associated buttons that can be flicked to and tapped to provide information on POIs that are located within the map area, or at least their names.  Some map apps, like Ariadne GPS (which is designed for blind users), let VoiceOver users explore the map area around them interactively to find out street names.  The traditional commercial navigation apps, such as Navigon, TomTom, or (for U.S. users) Motion X GPS Drive, provide downloadable maps for offline use with turn-by-turn navigation instructions. To summarize, here are a few suggestions:

• It would be helpful to add some brief instructions at the startup screen, such as "Use the downloader button to select offline maps for the areas of interests".  
• A small help file that explains how to use or import KML files would be nice.
• While it appears that the primary mode of presenting information in this app is graphical, offline map information could still be made accessible to visually impaired users. But this requires something more than just distance information. An ability to determine distance and direction to a POI on demand would be useful.  If external locations can be imported via a KML file, then the ability to trigger alerts when the user is within a specified distance of a POI might also be useful.  Again, this could be queried via a shake gesture, instead of continuously updating.

For more resources about developing apps for VoiceOver users, check the "Developers" link at the bottom of each web page.  In particular, I'd recommend reading Matt Legend Gemmell's linked blog article on that page.  Thanks for reaching out to the AppleVis community.