On his daily commute from New Jersey, Jack Chen, a lawyer in Google’s New York offices in Chelsea, navigates two train stations, the subway, and busy sidewalks using only what he can hear and smell, the feedback he gets from his cane, and the mental map he’s created in the six years he’s worked at Google.
“Poles and columns, such as you’ll find in the lower level of the A/C/E train in Penn Station, are some of my nemeses,” he said. “I figured out that if I pass the first one and hang what is approximately a 45 ...