Helping our customers navigate with Bindi Maps

In an Australian first, Bindi Maps, a simple and affordable way-finding smartphone app, was launched at Stockland Wetherill Park (NSW) in April 2019 to enable our vision impaired customers to independently and accurately navigate their way around the centre.

Stockland has always been focused on accessibility in our Retail Town Centres and actively seeks ways improve the customer experience for people who live with disability. Mobility, orientation and navigation of retail spaces present real challenges for many people who visit our centres, particularly people with vision impairment.

While exploring opportunities to use technology to improve the customer experience, we were introduced to technology start-up, Bindi Maps, an innovative mobile app that precisely locates a person in an indoor space and guides them to their destination. Using Bluetooth beacons installed on the ceiling throughout a shopping centre, Bindi Maps interacts with a smartphone to give helpful voice commands, identifying the easiest routes to stores, vertical transport, customer care and amenities within one metre of accuracy. For the vision-impaired, this technology provides independence and mobility.

Following testing and positive user feedback during a Big Day Out activation involving people with vision impairment, Bindi Maps has been in operation at Stockland Wetherill Park since April 2019. This was the first major Australian shopping centre to install Bindi Maps, and we have since launched it at other Stockland Retail Town Centres since.