Hi, my name is Ermes, and today I want to take advantage of the International Day of Persons with Disabilities to tell you a piece of my life with Google Maps.
If I started dealing with accessibility as a Local Guide years ago, I owe it above all to two people: my mother and @sashabg77 .
My mother spent the last years of her life in a wheelchair, due to a serious problem with her spine. Before, she used to move around with a walker, which allowed her, even with difficulty, to be independent, to go shopping, to meet friends and neighbors.
Her extremely limited mobility condition made me understand what disability is: it’s a prison.
Disability can be a cage, made of obstacles, stairs, bathrooms that are too narrow, uncomfortable tables, doors that are too narrow.
Disability can be darkness, not knowing “where” to find a shop you can go into, but also not knowing “how” to get there.
Disability can be not taking a vacation or not going to the park, because you don’t know if you’ll be able to get through it.
One day I tried to take my mom to the park in front of the house. Even though the park was “literally” in front of the house, to get in I had to walk hundreds of meters along the road, until I found the only small and steep ramp to get onto the sidewalk. A ramp that a person in a wheelchair could hardly handle alone.
My mom laughed and said to me: “Do you understand now why I never go to the park?”
The encounters that changed my life
There are two moments that completely changed my approach to accessibility:
- Sasha
I met Sasha during the Local Guides Summit 2017 in California. Listening to him first, and then talking to him at the Connect Lives in the following years gave birth to an idea in me, and the comparison with him made it grow until it became a project: Accessible Life.
- An accessible path in the middle of the mountains
I wrote about the trail in an old post that is no longer available, and then I quoted it to tell what was for me the extreme moment of this change: being invited as a speaker and as a panelist at the official Google Earth Forum of 2021. You can find the story here: If you believe it you can do it. How the Local Guides program changed my life
Google Maps and Accessibility
Accessibility is becoming one of the key elements of Google Maps. There is still a lot to do, but a lot has already been done, and using it correctly to help others depends only on us.
- Add accessibility attributes of the places we visit.
- Add accessibility information where Maps provides that space in our reviews.
- Add accessibility information directly in the text of our reviews when the specific field does not exist
- Add images that show the accessibility of accesses, bathrooms, ramps
- Remember to add this information in our reviews even when the places ARE NOT accessible.
- Add parking, when they are not already present in Google Maps, and add the accessibility information in there
This is what Google Maps shows regarding the accessibility of places
Share with us information about the accessibility of places you review on Google Maps.
This is my last review:
And now take 15 minutes, and listen to all this told directly by Sasha:
