I saw this on my breakfast cereal box (in the US) and looked it up. A company called Navilens made this to help visually impaired people with things like street signs, etc… neat!
EDIT TO ADD: Haha, I forgot I am on lemmy so we’re discussing the technology and licensing issues, instead of focusing on how this might improve the lives of visually impaired people.
And they’re known by everyone and widely used as the standard, riiiiiiight?
You probably don’t know about most the ones that aren’t doing fine, cus, you know, they aren’t doing so well.
Hmmmm. I certainly can’t think of any…
While these names may not be on the forefront of the public’s mind, they’re still insanely ubiquitous. There’s no reason this needed to be a proprietary tracking service. Especially not one that takes advantage of those with disabilities.