|
Abstract
|
Because community participation enriches the lives of people of all ages and abilities, eliminating obstacles to accessibility needs to be a priority for all communities. In many communities, deficiencies in the built environment, including roads, streets, parking lots, and buildings, prevent people with disabilities from achieving their optimal quality of life. (Citation1-3)
Major urban planning initiatives, national and international, have addressed the need to improve accessibility to ensure the participation of diverse members of the community, including the elderly and people with disabilities. (Citation4-7) Their recommendations for the built environment emphasize the importance of sidewalk accessibility to community participation.
As essential conduits, sidewalks are integral to the ability to access the range of community services, including shopping, employment, education, health care, social and recreational activities, and transportation. To ensure safe access to sidewalks and streets, in 2023, the US Access Board, in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Architectural Barriers Act, published new public right-of-way guidelines that apply to existing pedestrian facilities as well as new construction covered by previous federal legislation. (Citation8)
However, despite long-term, broad-based policy support for improvements, in many communities, sidewalk conditions remain a barrier to safe and independent access for residents, workers, and visitors, including people with disabilities. (Citation9-12) Ableism, delays in implementation, and lack of enforcement contribute to unacceptably slow progress. An open-data approach rooted in citizen science may provide the impetus to jumpstart much needed improvements.
Started in 2012, Project Sidewalk® a Google-Street-View®-based custom assessment tool, enlists community volunteers to gather crowd-sourced data on sidewalk conditions. (Citation12) Volunteers access the project on scistarter.org, an online hub for citizen science projects, and train and work remotely, using Google-Street-View's virtual panoramic imagery. To date, Project Sidewalk has been deployed in 20 cities across eight countries, including the US, Canada, Mexico, Ecuador, and Netherlands with native language support in English, German, Spanish, Mandarin, and Dutch. In total, Project Sidewalk users have contributed more than 932,000 geo-located labels detailing type and severity of surface irregularities, obstacles, missing sidewalks, and missing and inadequate curb ramps. ...
Language: en |