A big hurdle for people in wheelchairs is that they need accessibility (ramps, automatic doors, alternative entrances) to enter buildings conveniently. They may be familiar with accessibility options at places they frequent but how about a new location they need to visit? A new restaurant or business establishment? An office location where they have a job interview? Are those locations accessible? If they can find out about accessibility options prior to reaching those locations, it can save them from going through the trouble and frustration of finding alternate entrances and workarounds to get accommodated.  

To make things much easier for people in wheelchair, and to provide them with accessibility related information offered by various establishments in cities all over the world, Maayan Ziv, who is also a wheelchair user, has created AccessNow, an interactive map tool that tells users whether  locations they are wanting to visit are accessible or not, and if they are, how accessible are they (fully, partially, patio accessible, no accessibility). Users can either zoom in on an area on a map or search for a city and look for accessible establishments and alternatives for places with no accessibility.

Map legend. Click to enlarge.

AccessNow is crowdsourced  in that people in the community are constantly adding newer locations to the AccessNow map and rating places. At the time of writing this post, there are already 2075 locations pinned in 101 cities from around the world.

Watch the video below to see Maayan Ziv talk more about AccessNow.

AccessNow website: www.accessnow.ca
Source: Phys.org