A Smart City Is an Accessible City
A new breed of accessibility apps can make life easier for people with disabilities. They can also make it harder.
By Aimi Hamraie
A group gathers on a Nashville street corner, some rolling in wheelchairs and others walking. They have arrived holding their smartphones and make friendly chatter while a coordinator helps them log in to an app. Dispersing in small groups, they examine restaurants, cafes, and shops, looking for features signaling that disability is welcome there: a parking sign with the International Symbol of Access, a wheelchair ramp, an automatic front door, a wide bathroom stall with grab bars, braille text, low-flicker lighting, glare-free floors, scent-free soap. The groups use the app to document and rate these features. Once submitted, the information accumulates in a database that others can use to find accessible locations.
The event is an accessibility “map-a-thon,” an effort to document features of the built environment through collective labor, and turn data collection and visualization into tools for disability activism. They take advantage of smart-city technologies, particularly geolocated databases of business listings, to share information that may otherwise be available through only word of mouth. A combination of Google Maps…
