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How Steep Is That Sidewalk? A Digital Map for People with Disabilities

103 points by ericdanielski 7y ago

wrnr 7y ago
The data on how to access a location with a wheelchair is also valuable for drones
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- CaliforniaKarl 7y ago
  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!
elijahparker 7y ago
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-the-bike-lift-in-trondheim-norway.html https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/12/trampe-cyclocable-t...
pella 7y ago
https://www.accessmap.io/?region=wa.seattle&lon=-122.3426173&lat=47.6115177&z=14.5 https://www.accessmap.io/?region=wa.seattle&lon=-122.3426173... Github: https://github.com/AccessMap https://github.com/AccessMap
nilsb 7y ago
There's also https://wheelmap.org/ https://wheelmap.org/ which focuses on tagging accessibility issues with shops and other buildings on OSM.
- holgerd 7y ago
  Thanks for the mention! Co-founder of Wheelmap here. Happy to see people here find it useful as well.
killjoywashere 7y ago
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.
escapologybb 7y ago
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.
- benj111 7y ago
  Agreed, although I'm not sure I'd echo your thoughts on the engineers. My Aunt is in a wheelchair, and it's notable just how much of the world is cut off. One step renders a building inaccessible. The nearest analog most people get is probably pushing round a pram, but try doing that without lifting the front wheels off the ground. Unfortunately it's a hard problem to solve. You have many different demands on the streetscape and there's so much legacy infrastructure.
- noneeeed 7y ago
  If you're in the UK you might want to check out https://wheelmap.org https://wheelmap.org It is also crowd sourced, so coverage varies. Where I am in Bath, there has been a big push to get much of the city mapped (it's a pretty wheelchair-innacessible city), and apparantly it's been quite sucessful. The mapping project is run by the Bath:Hacked group, they have a project page at https://accessiblebath.org/ https://accessiblebath.org/ I'm happy to put you in touch with some of the people involved if you wanted to try and get something like that going where yoou live. I'm sure they'd be happy to help.
TASMebWdhWc9NeA 7y ago
There is (was?) a similar project in Germany based on OpenStreetMap: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/DE:Rollstuhlfahrer-Routing https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/DE:Rollstuhlfahrer-Routi... 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 7y ago
  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.
SolaceQuantum 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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.

103 points by ericdanielski 7y ago

wrnr 7y ago

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

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
CaliforniaKarl 7y ago
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!

elijahparker 7y ago

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-the-bike-lift-in-trondheim-norway.html https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/12/trampe-cyclocable-t...

pella 7y ago

https://www.accessmap.io/?region=wa.seattle&lon=-122.3426173&lat=47.6115177&z=14.5 https://www.accessmap.io/?region=wa.seattle&lon=-122.3426173... Github: https://github.com/AccessMap https://github.com/AccessMap

nilsb 7y ago

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

holgerd 7y ago
Thanks for the mention! Co-founder of Wheelmap here. Happy to see people here find it useful as well.

killjoywashere 7y ago

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.

escapologybb 7y ago

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.

benj111 7y ago
Agreed, although I'm not sure I'd echo your thoughts on the engineers. My Aunt is in a wheelchair, and it's notable just how much of the world is cut off. One step renders a building inaccessible. The nearest analog most people get is probably pushing round a pram, but try doing that without lifting the front wheels off the ground. Unfortunately it's a hard problem to solve. You have many different demands on the streetscape and there's so much legacy infrastructure.
noneeeed 7y ago
If you're in the UK you might want to check out https://wheelmap.org https://wheelmap.org It is also crowd sourced, so coverage varies. Where I am in Bath, there has been a big push to get much of the city mapped (it's a pretty wheelchair-innacessible city), and apparantly it's been quite sucessful. The mapping project is run by the Bath:Hacked group, they have a project page at https://accessiblebath.org/ https://accessiblebath.org/ I'm happy to put you in touch with some of the people involved if you wanted to try and get something like that going where yoou live. I'm sure they'd be happy to help.

TASMebWdhWc9NeA 7y ago

There is (was?) a similar project in Germany based on OpenStreetMap: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/DE:Rollstuhlfahrer-Routing https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/DE:Rollstuhlfahrer-Routi... 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 7y ago
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.

SolaceQuantum 7y ago

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 7y ago
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.