The Autonomous Vehicle Assistant (AVA): Emerging technology design supporting blind and visually impaired travelers in autonomous transportation.

•Details the design process of a winning project in the inclusive design challenge.•Explores safe blind and visually impaired localization of automated vehicles.•Presents a novel computer vision, ultrawideband, and GPS based approach.•Evaluates approach with two user studies demonstrating positive results.•Presents future directions involving user training and implementation.