Paraplegic maps cities in bid to help disabled
Digitalise info on accessibility
BARCELONA, April 19, (RTRS): Entrepreneur Josep Esteba became so frustrated trying to get around his native Spain in a wheelchair for more than 20 years that he embarked on a mission to map cities for disabled people all over the world.
“Many years ago I travelled a lot for work, and would arrive in cities that I didn’t know very well,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “That’s when I realised that there just wasn’t information for those that needed it.”
Fast-forward several years and Esteba, a paraplegic since a car accident in his early twenties, set out on another journey — this time a virtual one to digitalise information on accessibility.
The 50-year-old, who founded the free mobile application Mapp4all in 2015, said such data had simply not existed in Spain.
The Barcelona-based app allows wheelchair users, as well as the blind, hearing-impaired and others, to find out how accessible a building is before they visit it.
Users can check whether a cinema or museum has ramps or lift access, for instance, or if a restaurant provides menus in Braille. Establishments can register to add information themselves, but the app also draws on data that is self-reported by users. It has been downloaded in nearly 3,000 cities and works across nine languages. Mapp4all is one of a slew of apps that have been developed in recent years to help disabled people navigate cities.
BlindSquare and Wayfindr both offer audio instructions to help blind people get around cities globally, while the Wheely NYC app helps New Yorkers use the subway by providing targeted information, like whether lifts are working.
More than 1 billion people in the world have a disability, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
By 2050, of the roughly 6.25 billion people who will be living in urban areas, 15 percent are expected to have disabilities, the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs has predicted. People with disabilities tend to have fewer economic opportunities and lower educational achievements than their able-bodied peers, due to a lack of tailored services and the obstacles they face in everyday life, according to the WHO.
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef suffered a “catastrophic die-off” of coral during an extended heatwave in 2016, threatening a broader range of reef life than previously feared, a report revealed Thursday.
Scientists said some 30 percent of the reef’s coral died in the heatwave from March to November 2016, the first of an unprecedented two successive years
Esteba
of coral bleaching along the 2,300-km (1,400-mile) World Heritage-listed reef off Australia’s northeastern coast.
The study published Thursday in the journal Nature found that coral, which serve as habitats for other creatures, were particularly hard hit by the rising sea temperatures caused by global warming. (AFP)