Wind chimes were installed throughout the SFSU campus to help the blind navigate key buildings. But oh that fickle wind ... Chronicle | that was aural this is tactile
Campus Orientation
By ANNE K. WALTERS

Most people might not even notice the tinkling of a wind chime in a neighbor's window, but for Toshiro Yamamoto the sound was a beacon.

A few years ago, as a kinesiology student at San Francisco State University, Mr. Yamamoto, who is blind, turned down the wrong street and got lost coming home. He later noticed the sound of a wind chime near his house and has since used it to find his way. At the university, there weren't any similar aural clues to help him, so he suggested that chimes be installed near key buildings.

Phil Evans, director of campus grounds, had been working to make the university more accessible to all students and said installing the wind chimes was the easiest such project he had undertaken.

After the chimes were hung around the campus last semester, an unlikely problem arose — the fickle San Francisco wind. When not enough wind blew, there was no sound for people to follow. When too much wind blew during winter storms, the chimes were damaged.

To solve that problem, Mr. Evans is collaborating with industrial-design students to create small speakers that can be installed around the campus and programmed to broadcast different sounds to alert people where intersections, entrances, and stairs are.

In the meantime, Mr. Yamamoto and other blind students are learning navigational cues from the chimes. For example, he says, "If the sound is coming from the left side, what does it mean?"