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Technology makes travel easier by allowing us to research and map out our travel plans. But for the disability community, technology can be the most valuable travel companion. The following apps and sites help people with disabilities make smart and safe choices so they can get out in the world and explore more than ever.
AccessibleGO
The service AccessibleGO was created by Miriam Eljas, whose mom, Emma, had multiple sclerosis and was a wheelchair user. The site allows you to book accessible flights and hotels across the United States. Then, a team member calls each of the vendors to confirm they can meet your needs. Founder Eljas tells me that the additional follow-up call offers assurance for clients with disabilities, “so you know a real person has understood your accessibility requirements and has personally spoken with your hotel, airline, or car company to ensure a smooth trip.”
Earlier this year accessibleGO expanded to include bookings for rental cars with hand controls, wheelchair van rentals, accessible rides, and mobility equipment. The site also posts city guides that summarize accessible attractions for people with a variety of disabilities. Currently, accessibleGO is an online site, but the company plans to release a mobile app.
Accessnow
Available on the web and as a mobile app, Accessnow allows people to search for and discover the accessibility of places and experiences all around the world. The app was created by Maayan Ziv of Canada, who is a wheelchair user. She and her staff work with tourism organizations, retail companies, governments, and transit networks to share information about accessible and inclusive locations from ramps to sensory needs to gender neutral restrooms.
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Disabled people in the community and their allies also add their own reviews and perspectives about locations and how accommodating they are. “We built our company with the most concrete, tangible thing we can do to support the disability community today,” says Ziv, “which is helping millions of disabled people make decisions about where to go, where not to go, and what you are going to get into when you arrive there.”
iAccessLife
Cocreated by Brandon Winfield, who was injured in a motocross accident that left him with a thoracic spinal cord injury that paralyzed him from the waist down, iAccessLife is a mobile app that allows its users to rate, review, and research locations based on accessibility. Launched in 2019, the mobile app has accessibility ratings for over 10,000 unique locations in 50 states and over 30 countries. It’s available on both iOS and Android. The company also offers Voice by iAccess Life, a service that allows users the chance to give anonymous feedback to companies about their accessibility efforts so the company can improve their customer service.
Wheelmap
The website Wheelmap was originally started by the nonprofit organization SOZIALHELDEN e.V in Europe because of the lack of regulations for wheelchair accessibility in public spaces outside of the United States.
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The site is similar to Wikipedia, where members of the community have access to make their own modifications as they visit locations and experience each place’s level of accessibility. Users can mark their findings with either a green symbol denoting fully wheelchair accessible places; orange, which means partially wheelchair accessible; or red, indicating the place is not accessible. The accessibility of restrooms can also be rated. Berlin, Tokyo, and Paris are hot spots for entries, but the site has grown to include users worldwide with 3.2 million marked places.
Google Maps
Google's free and ubiquitous Maps platform offers quite a few accessibility features, such as a wheelchair-accessible route option for walking directions so you can get stair-free routes between locations. If you’re exploring shops, businesses, or museums, the wheelchair icon can help you find accessibility information. For example, Google can tell you if there is a step-free entrance, accessible restrooms, parking, or seating.
For those with a visual impairment, the screen reader capabilities for Lens in Maps can give you auditory feedback of the places around you as well as helpful information, like the name and category of a place and how far away it is. And, with Google’s Detailed Voice Guidance feature available globally, you can also get spoken walking directions.
Be My Eyes
The mobile app Be My Eyes gives people who are blind or have low vision virtual access to sighted volunteers over a video call. The volunteers give real-time descriptions of what they see through the phone's camera. For example, a sample call shows a blind user asking for help identifying a red cardigan versus a black cardigan. Currently, there are nearly 690,000 blind people and over 7,600,000 registered volunteers on the platform.
If the user doesn’t want to connect with a live person, the app also offers an artificial intelligence feature called Be My AI that uses computer vision and an AI chatbot to describe what it sees in the photos you take. Since the feature doesn’t rely on human volunteers, users can access the AI at any time of day or night, or when they just need a quick answer about something simple and don’t want to bug somebody.
The app is available on both iOS and Android. "While people use Be My Eyes for a ton of things, we know assistance with travel is a major use case,” says Mike Buckley, chairman and CEO. Buckley says the app can assist with booking hotels, and customers can use Be My AI to understand the buttons on a phone or the soap and shampoo bottles in the shower.
Features on Your iPhone
Apple products offer numerous accessibility features. For example, the iPhone’s live captions feature allows users who are Deaf or hard of hearing to read real time captions on their screen when talking to someone in person, on FaceTime, or on a phone call. Sound Recognition allows the user to program the phone to recognize specific sounds such as a doorbell, an alarm, or water running from a faucet, and will alert the user with a vibration and a notification. And Magnifier not only magnifies objects, signs, and labels, it also includes detection modes. For example, Door Detection helps the user navigate to a door and tells them how to open it.
Other Resources
In addition to these apps and websites, travel blogs like Curb Free with Cory Lee, Have Wheelchair Will Travel, and Simply Emma are great places to find accessible travel tips. Apps like GalaPro allow Deaf and hard-of-hearing users the chance to read captions at Broadway shows if they aren’t already offered. And many sites such as Yelp and Airbnb are now incorporating accessibility into their platforms, thereby making vacations that much more, well, accessible. So now even more people can get in on the fun.
