Today on 30th December 2022 “Map Accessibility 2022” was held on International Day of Disabled Persons. Like every year, Local Guides Bangla announced this meetup campaign on the same day in Dhaka and Rajshahi, where Rajshahi Local Guide participated spontaneously.
International Day of Persons with Disabilities is an international observance promoted by the United Nations since 1992. It has been observed with varying degrees of success around the planet. -Wikipedia
At the beginning of the event, Shahinur and @KMemon came early and arranged everything. As event resources, Shafiul Bashar bhai sent several stickers from Dhaka and a small banner written a local guide to introduce the event venue to the attendees. We made a small plan for our activities in the meantime.
Many members arrived at our event venue within half an hour. Gradually this number was increasing. Gathering everyone, @shahinurime first gave a small speech thanking everyone for today’s event. After that, several fellow local guides spoke about accessibility and its effects on our society.
Delwar Hussain is an active local guide and youth organizer. We discussed how qualitative changes could be brought to an area’s business through google mapping.
Bapparaj Raju is a public speaker and social activist who works with backward communities. He inspired local guides to take this opportunity to work for disabled people using smartphones and access to the internet.
@AyonSaha , who is an active local guide, guided everyone in informing small businesses about Accessible Entrances and Accessible Seating for people with disabilities. Asaduzzaman Raju, one of the veteran local guides and internet influencers, shared about how we can contribute to society using the internet and smartphones.
@The-Sabbir shared some technical instructions about the accessibility contribution process from google maps apps. He showed us a live example with the accessibility editing of Even Venue entry on google maps. Shahinur Islam shared the plan for 2 sectors, one by contributing with google maps and stickers and another was to talking with business owners about the accessibilities.
A group of about 22 people was divided into small groups of 2-3 people and checked the accessibility of several buildings, hotels, restaurants, and offices in the city and helped to mark the places accordingly with the help of stickers.
Another group of 5 people visited some of the restaurants and talked with authorities about implementing the accessible entrances to get a more enriched feature on google maps.
We were thrilled to see so many local guides attendees come out to help make Google maps more user-friendly for people with disabilities. The event was a great opportunity to learn from each other and expand our knowledge on making Google Maps more accessible for users with disabilities. We look forward to continuing to work together to make Google Maps even more accessible for people with different abilities.
A details video recap of the highlighted moments at this event.
Finally, the event ended with a delicious tea invitation from @sadiik and a small photo session. We all had a great experience together; it was a great day for all of us.
A big thank you to everyone who participated and made this event such a success. Special thanks to Google Local Guides Bangla for hosting this event and @ShafiulB for helping with courteous support.
