[Accessibility] looking for a platform for our initiative - is OSM the one ?

[Lulu-Ann at gmx.de]

Hello Catherine!

> I am collaborating with some people here in Montreal to build a tool 
> that informs on the accessibility of public places. We have a first 
> prototype up at www.montrealaccessible.ca, that was thrown together this 
> week-end at a hackothon.

Nice to hear that you are working on such a project.

> I am not very knowledgeable when it comes to maps and stuff, so 
> apologies if some of this does not make sense, but I am told by the 
> hackers that the data is stored in Google Fusion Tables. And we have a 
> separate Google Spreadsheet that has a form that you can access from the 
> site. Unfortunately, we couldn't get the spreadsheet to be automatically 
> sent to the Fusion Table. So we would have to write a script to get that 
> to happen.

Well, google maps is not really our topic here, but it should be easy to add some buttons to swap the map in the background to OSM.
Happy you found your way to this list.

> We are looking around for the best platform for our initiative. We have 
> been looking at Ushaidi and OSM. Our main concern of course is that 
> whatever we end up choosing is usable by people with different types of 
> disabilities so that they can contribute to data collection and also can 
> consult the data through the interface. I have looked at your wiki and 
> the section on accessibility. But unfortunately, it is rather ambiguous 
> with regards to just how accessible some of the related initiatives are. 
> Maybe I am not looking in the right place for this info...

Best start for a project is always to do some searching for existing projects.
There's http://wheelchair.org .

I always wonder why people start projects only locally. 
Are they not confident enough to use their idea on the whole world?

> Anyway, OSM would be great because our data can probably be a useful 
> contribution. But how does it rate in terms of accessibility ?

OSM is accessible for anyone except blind and visually impaired persons.
Some things may not be accessible for persons who can not substitute mouse use in certain ways.

We are working on Look and Listen Map (LALM) to make it accessible for blind persons.

Just contact the people behind wheelchair.org and do things together!

Best regards
Lulu-Ann

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