Building an app that empowers people
Ryerson grad’s platform rates Toronto and other cities on wheelchair accessibility
It’s said the best technology solves a problem.
Just ask Maayan Ziv, a 25-year-old Torontonian living with muscular dystrophy, who founded AccessNow, a website — and as of this spring, an app — that rates locations based on how wheelchair-accessible they are.
“As someone who has used a wheelchair to get around my whole life, I’ve discovered there are many thousands of places not easy for people like me to access,” explains Ziv, who graduated from Ryerson University with a masters in digital media last summer. “And so I was personally motivated to solve this problem.”
As for the impetus for AccessNow, Ziv recalls being at a bar with some friends in the fall of 2014, when she started her masters program.
“At that point, I didn’t have the technical skills to build the app, but I had that spark, that revelation, this is what I wanted to do.” Ziv also completed her undergraduate degree at Ryerson, in media production (formerly radio and television arts).
Rather than Ziv and her two colleagues trying to add virtual pushpins on city maps by themselves, AccessNow crowdsources input from others who rate how accessible a location is using a colour-code: green for good, yellow for needs work and red for inaccessible. Establishments that receive a yellow or red pin on the map are contacted by AccessNow, usually over social media, with some suggestions on how to make the location more accessible.
“It’s the beginning of a conversation and not the end of one,” says Ziv. “For example, we might remind them they don’t have a ramp to enter their restaurant and with recommendations on removing those barriers.”
People can then search for specific places or browse to see what’s nearby, with the accessibility features.
“Think of it like Yelp or TripAdvisor, but for the many people who could benefit from seeing how accessible a place is before they call or go there,” says Ziv, who handles AccessNow’s design, branding and marketing.
While Toronto and other parts of Canada remain the focus on AccessNow, users are beginning to add pins in the U.S., Europe and Australia. Ziv says she purposely launched the accessnow.ca site during last summer’s Parapan Am Games to help assist those visiting Toronto. What started with about 800 pins on a map has ballooned into more than 2,600 pins, in 119 cities. Ziv says her goal is to “reach millions of pins, in every part of the world.” The platform relies on Google Maps, which is free to use.
AccessNow — created in Ryerson’s Digital Media Zone, a business incubator for tech startups — is free for all users and will remain that way when the app debuts.
“Knowing what you have access to should be a right, so we didn’t want to charge for the information,” says Ziv, but the startup is monetized through brand partnerships, which includes some advertisements.
As part of Next 36, an accelerator for entrepreneurs and tech startups, Ziv says AccessNow is an example of technology that can be empowering.
“We live in a digital age, and there is so much opportunity through technology to solve the world’s problems. Amazing that we couldn’t do what we’re doing even 20 years ago.”