
How Steep Is That Sidewalk? A Digital Map for People with Disabilities - ericdanielski
https://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/app-seattle-disability-digital-map-20190821
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escapologybb
This is one of those things that now you've seen it you'll start to notice
just how bumpy the world is! I know I didn't give any of this stuff a second
thought until quadriplegia meant I became a full-time wheelchair driver.

Ramps on the front of buildings and internal step free access in modern
buildings is absolutely wonderful, but unless every metre of a journey from
where I am now to where I want to go is accessible then none of it is
accessible.

The signal cannot carry.

For example where we used to live it was impossible for me to turn left out of
my house at the beginning of any journey, it did not matter how much I tried
to reason with thay nine inch high curb just would not smooth out. And that is
it, that whole part of my neighbourhood was cut off because the engineers
putting in dropped curbs have not seemed to fully grok the reason for dropped
curbs.

This kind of mapping is absolutely invaluable and has to be kept in the open
source world I think, that does not mean people should not make money from it
but this is one of those things where crowdsourcing could really speed up the
process considering we are all carrying around incredibly sophisticated
geospatial mapping devices containing accelerometers, GPS and all the other
bits and bobs needed to quickly map an area.

Hit me up if any of you want to collaborate on a project like this in the UK.

~~~
ad404b8a372f2b9
I feel the same way, I've been meaning to do a similar project for France for
a long time, a sort of accessibility index for sidewalks that would be added
to a weighted sum to give cities an accessibility score. I feel that's where
projects like wheelmap fail since they only map buildings.

I don't know how it is in the UK but I'm not convinced by crowdsourcing in
this case, there are so few of us and out of the few how many can be reached
and convinced to participate. In most places I've worked or been to I've
always been the only handicapped person there and most places I wanted to go
to that I checked on wheelmap were not mapped. I feel a solution could be the
automatic treatment of aerial photography like you get on google maps' highest
zoom settings. It'd be somewhat easy to detect poles in the middle of
sidewalks, broken sidewalks, tree roots, etc... and I feel it might be
possible to estimate curb height and sidewalk steepness doing some clever
processing. So far I'm stuck gathering data, I've found a government website
with UK aerial data but was unable to download it and it seemed the coverage
was very sparse. Either way I'd be interested in hearing more about your ideas
and potentially collaborating even though I'm not in the U.K.

On a related note, I talked briefly with someone who worked in public
infrastructure, particularly on "walkability" and he told me to look into
Microscale Audit of Pedestrian Streetscapes (MAPS), that might be of interest
to you.

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pella
[https://www.accessmap.io/?region=wa.seattle&lon=-122.3426173...](https://www.accessmap.io/?region=wa.seattle&lon=-122.3426173&lat=47.6115177&z=14.5)

Github: [https://github.com/AccessMap](https://github.com/AccessMap)

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TASMebWdhWc9NeA
There is (was?) a similar project in Germany based on OpenStreetMap:
[https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/DE:Rollstuhlfahrer-
Routi...](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/DE:Rollstuhlfahrer-Routing)

The idea was awesome: make the routing algorithm take steps and other
impediments into consideration for wheelchair drivers.

I don't know how far they came, but when I read about it I thought that
OpenStreetMap is the perfect tool for this.

~~~
holgerd
This has a wheelchair routing profile (implemented by some folks at the
Heidelberg University):
[https://maps.openrouteservice.org](https://maps.openrouteservice.org)

Would love to evolve this and integrate it into
[https://wheelmap.org](https://wheelmap.org) one day!

It's also based on OpenStreetMap, but I am not sure how good the coverage of
pavement quality and curb cuts are in diffewrent parts of the world.

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killjoywashere
I recently landed myself in a wheelchair for several weeks and this is a
_huge_ issue. I went from surfing and skateboarding (what got me into the
wheelchair) to suddenly mortally afraid of leaving my house, which is on a
hill, because the wheelchair is so difficult to control. My wife and I tried
to go for a walk around the block once. Exactly one once. Won't do that again.

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nilsb
There's also [https://wheelmap.org/](https://wheelmap.org/) which focuses on
tagging accessibility issues with shops and other buildings on OSM.

~~~
holgerd
Thanks for the mention! Co-founder of Wheelmap here. Happy to see people here
find it useful as well.

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SolaceQuantum
One of my questions is what do we as regular people in order to advocate for
greater accessibility?

For example, my morning commute includes a walk over a sidewalk. At one point
there was some construction where I guess some really heavy machinery was sat
up on the sidewalks, leaving several of them so cratered that even a regular
person could easily twist their ankle because of the severity of the dip in
the walkway. Essentially, a perfectly accessible sidewalk is now completely
inaccessible due to damage. I don't even know who to contact about this issue,
though.

~~~
Konnstann
I guess either the company doing the construction or your municipal
government. They are required to make accessible detours, there's a lot of
construction around my area and all of the sites have set up ramps and
walkways around the construction zone.

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elijahparker
Not for wheelchairs, but this reminds me of one of the steepest city streets
I’ve encountered that actually has a lift for bicycles:
[https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/12/trampe-
cyclocable-t...](https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/12/trampe-cyclocable-
the-bike-lift-in-trondheim-norway.html)

------
wrnr
The data on how to access a location with a wheelchair is also valuable for
drones

~~~
CaliforniaKarl
That would actually be a great way for delivery drones to contribute!

Let’s say construction has begun at a location. The on-street parking at that
location has been marked ‘TEMPORARY NO PARKING’ during construction hours. The
signs for this are on A-frames, places on the sidewalk.

Depending on the width of the sidewalk, the A-frames may have turned the
sidewalk into a wheelchair-unfriendly place. If a delivery drone travels the
sidewalk and discovers this, it would be great if that information could
automatically be contributed to a place like the Open Street Map!

