Sadly, people started building roads, factories, houses, buildings, and factories without considering that not everyone moves as easily.
For whatever reason, many people around the world rely on a tool like a wheelchair to get around on a daily basis.The fact that the world wasn’t made for these people is a problem that they have to deal with every day, especially when they go to public places with high steps or narrow spaces.
This is something that numerous organizations and legislatures have already begun to change, providing travel offices to people with engine impairments.
Google Maps
However, there is a second problem with this: there isn’t enough information on the Internet about public places that are accessible to wheelchairs. In this manner, in honor of World Openness Day, Google Guides provides an additional feature that enables the listing of wheelchair-accessible locations.
Pressing the button in the app that says “Accessible places” turns on this new feature of Google Maps. It will show locations on the map where wheelchair users can travel.
Additionally, all users of Google Maps, including business owners, are able to include specific information regarding the accessibility of specific locations to assist wheelchair users.
It goes without saying that this feature is only currently available in Japan, Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom;Google, on the other hand, anticipates introducing it to every nation in the coming years.If you are one of the fortunate few who has already had the opportunity to test out this new Google Maps feature, you can enable it by going to Settings>Accessibility settings.
In the search results on Google Maps, wheelchair icons will be shown. Instead, the website will list things like entrances, elevators, and public restrooms. Wheelchair clients will actually want to decide when they can head off to some place all alone and when they need help from someone else as such.
More than 15 million locations’ accessibility information is currently available on Google Maps.
It goes without saying that there are some places that are not required by law to make themselves available to people with disabilities because of verifiable safety concerns or other factors.
This feature won’t show many public sites on Google Maps as a result.However, we are facing a fantastic initiative that we hope will quickly spread to other nations.
Google Guides, an application leaned toward by almost 70% of iPhone clients, will currently list wheelchair openness close by data like traffic and store hours.The new feature makes it easier for people with disabilities, stroller parents, and the elderly to use the app.
To make Google Maps accessible to people with physical disabilities, a group of Google employees, led by Rio Akasaka, product manager for Google Drive, took advantage of a dying policy.In 2004, Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin announced the well-known “20 percent” policy, which encourages employees to spend up to 20 percent of their working hours on personal projects that could benefit the company.
This policy is behind some of Google’s most popular products, like Gmail, AdSense, and Google News.But a new rule says that before starting a project, employees have to ask their managers for permission. Only a small percentage of Googlers use the 20% time.
Akasaka collaborated with a group of contributors over the past year to create accessibility guidelines for the app. Users of Google’s “Local Guides,” who provide information about locations in exchange for access to beta features and free Google Drive storage, provided him with data on accessibility. Google only added the new accessibility feature after collecting user data for months.
Since Google is proud of making information “universally accessible and useful,” why did it take so long to make one of its most important apps accessible to wheelchair users?Akasaka told Business Insider that accessibility is important at Google, but that “it’s often facilitated by whether or not there’s a legal requirement, or some kind of requirement we need
By clicking on the location’s description and looking under the “amenities” tab, you can determine whether or not it is wheelchair accessible. The feature is not yet available in all places.