The article kind of dismissed Microsoft Soundscape as a failure, but for blind people who want awareness of what is around I still don't think there has been anything that beats it. I work on one of it's successors, Soundscape Community [0]. It is based on the code Microsoft released as open source when they shut down the project.
RobMurray · · focus · HN ↗
[0] <a href="https://github.com/soundscape-community/soundscape/" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/soundscape-community/soundscape/