Global Resources and Promising Practices for Building and Refining Accessible and Inclusive Smart Cities from Darren Bates LLC.
Railway operators in and outside Tokyo are turning to smartphone apps to make their services more accessible and convenient for passengers that use wheelchairs. Under one new system, an app allows station staff to internally share the information of where passengers board trains and at what time they will arrive at their destinations, so that they can help them get…
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South Korea’s second largest city is using new, inclusive technology to bring down barriers to mobility for people who are blind.
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How Well Are We Ensuring Contactless Fare Payment Is Accessible and Equitable for Everyone? Considering equity and accessibility issues from the beginning will help ensure all travellers have barrier-free access to these new systems.
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Traveling to work, meeting friends for a catch up or just doing some shopping are often taken for granted by people with no known disabilities. For the visually impaired, these seemingly simple things can be a serious challenge. But imagine a city equipped with technology that enables the visually impaired to recognise people, places or even bank notes, helping them…
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Cities are becoming smarter than ever before, with a plethora of startups looking to transform how we interact with our urban spaces. The rise of the smart city, however, poses a new and difficult problem for governments…
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A Smart City gives its citizens all the benefits of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to provide them with services adapted to their needs in real time. This technology can be found at different levels of society such as education, transportation, the environment, health or safety. The overall objective of the smart city is therefore to improve the quality of…
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One of the principles we lift up in our report is to “build with, not for” affected communities. For technology to deliver on the promise of increased inclusion, design and implementation need to be grounded in the needs and priorities of communities. To do this equitably requires actively engaging and listening to residents throughout the process.
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Everyday, we rethink today’s cities to transform them in smart cities accessible to everyone. By creating solutions ever more tailored to the needs of people with disabilities, we push the limits, constantly improve the urban life and make the cities more enjoyable for the growing majority.
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To ensure #SmartCities are correctly constructed for the elderly, it is necessary to include them in the planning phase. Young people cannot understand the issues faced by the elderly. such as climbing up the stairs or walking on an uneven sidewalk.
Read More Most people know about Seattle’s rain, but they’re surprised to learn that the city, especially the downtown area, is steeper than Denver, the “Mile High City.” Seattle’s hills can render many buildings and businesses, including places like City Hall, inaccessible to people with mobility needs. For those people, apps such as Google Maps are not especially helpful because they show…
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Human rights must be put at the centre of development plans for smart cities. Civil servants should have a deep understanding of the technologies they are contracting, and enforce public procurement specifications that protect against abusive or wrongful use of the technologies. Technology needs to have safeguards to ensure that its use is consistent with human rights standards.
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Researchers with the Global Disability Innovation Hub, co-led by UCL (University College London) in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IIT-Delhi), are developing wheelchair-accessible maps of Delhi, India. Described as Street Rehab, the collaborative project has been conceptualized with innovative sensing platforms. This is how it works. UCL has arrived at low-cost sensors that can identify features of…
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Access, is Chris Higgin’s short documentary about accessibility. It follows Cory Joseph through a typical day, showing how he uses his smartphone, Braille display, tactile watch, and guide dog (named Vine) to navigate the world. I hope you watch it, and I hope it inspires you to make your work more accessible to more people….
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Digital accessibility is in a better state today than it has ever been—but we still have a long way to go. The emergence of IoT devices have made life easier for those with disabilities, but has this been a conscious effort on behalf of industry-leading brands, or just a fortunate side effect of omnichannel marketing? dotCMS is a proud supporter…
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Whether for work or personal enjoyment, reading has long-lasting social and cognitive benefits. However, for seniors experiencing barriers to reading such as low vision or a physical impairment, using traditional print materials is a struggle, if not impossible. Benetech’s growing library of over 685,000 accessible titles, Bookshare, enables seniors to read in ways that work for them, choosing from a…
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How many times in the past year have you heard someone say that the future of mobility is shared, electric, autonomous and connected? While this utopian view sounds like something we should strive for, we are missing two critical aspects of mobility, says Carol Schweiger, President of Schweiger Consulting and Chairperson of the New England Intelligent Transportation Society: accessibility and inclusivity. It…
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A Smart City Is an Accessible City. A new breed of accessibility apps can make life easier for people with disabilities. They can also make it harder. A group gathers on a Nashville street corner, some rolling in wheelchairs and others walking. They have arrived holding their smartphones and make friendly chatter while a coordinator helps them log in to…
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The Promise and Peril of “Smart” Cities Technology can help us govern better, but at what price to urban life? Technology can help us govern better, but at what price to urban life actual article chapter content Last year, American newspapers published more than 800 stories about “smart” cities. Readers could learn how municipal governments are deploying sophisticated technology to…
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Cities are serious business – economic powerhouses with their own delicate ecosystems – but that doesn’t mean designing them shouldn’t be fun. In Barcelona they made it a game. Like a Spanish translation of SimCity, the popular ’90s video game for imagining cities that plays on Nintendo’s moustachioed mascot Mario, SuperBarrio offers real residents the chance to determine how their…
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Take a walk down one of the trendy little laneways in the heart of Melbourne, flat white in hand, and imagine: What will the city look like in five years? “The thing that people love about Melbourne is Melbourne as a place and an experience”, says Ben Rimmer, Chief Executive of the City of Melbourne. We are sitting in his…
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