RECAP - Virtual Accessibility Lahore

Freeze………

The only word I think of whenever I start a meetup session with my fellow Local Guides. In fact, an hour feels like a few minutes and quite easily we can extend the time but one must follow the agenda shared with the audience.

This Sunday I hosted my third Virtual Meetup on Accessibility and the aim was to share the Accessibility situation in my city Lahore and shared the following agenda before the meetup:

  1. Introduction of the attendees
  2. A brief presentation Accessibility in Lahore
  3. Question/ Answers session

Hello! , Hi!, Greetings!, Assalam o Alaikum, Namaste!

This is what you hear when you join the meetup room. Local Guides greet each other and to be honest, it is one of the most beautiful things you observe in a meetup. These expressions prove that we as a community are ONE.

After the greetings and introduction, we moved to the presentation part where I shared a few slides on “Accessibility in Lahore”. I shared a brief introduction of Lahore, its historical significance, and its current position as a business hub.

It was surprising for a few of our local Guides that International food chain like “KFC” still doesn’t give importance to accessibility entrance and parking facilities. Despite getting instructions from the owners to follow international standards in the overall operations, they are totally ignoring this important aspect. Moving on, I talked about the reviews we as a customer share on Google Maps, and the majority of us do not mention about the absence of these facilities. There are a few things I keep in mind while writing a review:

  • Product quality
  • Team response
  • Place details
  • Accessibility features
  • Use of Emojis

Among all the slides, there was one on which I wanted all the Local Guides to focus on and that is shared below.

for me, this expresses our willingness and perception about the accessibility features. The one on the ground floor installs a ramp for accessibility while the one on the 1st floor, using the same path to enter his shop, he does not want to install any sort of ramp or accessibility lift for his customers. Probably, he observes that ramp every time he goes in or out but never bothered to make it available. And with that picture, I ended up my presentation with few “NEED OF THE HOUR” things to be done:

  • A two-liner review - “requesting the management to add a ramp at the entrance for accessibility”. This idea was basically taken from a Virtual Accessibility Meetup organized by @KASHIFMISIDIA and @JANEBURUNINA

  • Re-Edit our Reviews – make sure to revisit our reviews and change it if the place has improved. I learned this thing from @SalmaanN Bhai from his meetup where he talked about visiting a small shop for lunch and talked about the accessibility feature with a shop owner and suggested to re-edit the reviews if it is available on your next visit.

  • Accessibility Doors – I shared this idea of adding the Accessibility Doors feature in the “DESCRIBE” section of Google Map. Because in Pakistan not every shop or location has an automatic door at the entrance. The link of this IDEA in the Idea Exchange is here.

  • Arrange Accessibility Walks (Post Pandemic) – Lahore is one of the emerging cities in Pakistan where Local Guides are actively contributing but we haven’t arranged Accessibility Awareness activities. This should be done at priority.

Now was the time to share our experiences and ideas as to how we can improve the accessibility in our society. Some of the few notes shared by our Local Guides were not just impressive but express serious concerns.

“In Pakistan, most of the families do not let our Wheelchair members to move around alone. Wheelchair people are totally dependent on the family members”, said by @Muhammad_Usman .

In other terms, I would say they do not have the liberty to travel alone. But if we take it positively, we may say that we are so much concerned about them that we do not want to leave them alone in any condition.

Pakistan is far far behind from other countries in terms of accessibility features. They don’t focus on such things, expressed by @Sarbland and @thehmsofficial . @Lucii also shared the same thoughts about her country Indonesia.

@RosyKohli shared that these accessibility meetups have helped her to understand the noble cause and now she is always observing these things whenever she is visiting any place.

@KashifMisidia , An Accessibility Champion, talked about the most important feature on the Google Map which allows you to DESCRIBE a place. We should use this feature to highlight the presence of accessibility features at a place.

Our new Accessibility Champion, @AnshukMitra suggested sharing the pictures of accessibility features on Google map as much as possible which can be very useful and handy for others.

We ended the session on a beautiful note:

“We shall keep sharing accessibility knowledge with the community regardless of the results. We believe that this will definitely help our future generation”, by @Mumtaz

Thanks everyone for the participation Alffiiy Sagir AkmalB RHoqueBD Safdarrai.

Apologies if I have missed anyone’s name or suggestions or thoughts.

Stay safe

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@Bilal_shaikh

@AkmalB

@Safdarrai

@RHoqueBD

@AlphaSays

@Sagir

Thank you guys for your support.

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Great recap of Wonderful meet-up @MSulaiman

As I told you on the same day, I really impressed by your presentation, and it was quite easy to understand for everyone. It was great learning session for me as well, and I got some great points by your presentation. On the same time I was feeling great when I was listening the views of all attendees about your meet-up.

Keep inspiring us Sulaiman Bhai.

And many congratulations for a great successful meet-up. Best of luck for your future initiatives. :crossed_fingers:

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thanks a lot @MSulaiman Bhai for arranging such a great Meetup where I learned a lot of new things

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Congratulations @MSulaiman with successful Accessibility Virtual Meet-up!

Your amazing detailed recap makes me feel like I attend your Meet-up and meet wonderful Local Guides friends! A pity I missed it.

Hope we can do Accessibility Walk Meet-ups soon to meet Local Guides and put our efforts to make our cities, our countries more accessible for people with special needs.

Thank you for hosting this wonderful Meet-up and sharing your recap with us!

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@MSulaiman

Awesome post I entered your meet up late, but reading your post got to know more things.

Here after unity walk I started editing the post ,started writing whether accessibility is there or not & all credit goes to @KashifMisidia bhai… All the best.

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Thank you once again @MSulaiman @KashifMisidia bhi for reminding again and again about the importance of accessibility!!!

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@SalmaanN
Great Work for accessibility meet-up .

Congratulations for successful event.

Keep it up your good work for humanity. Good work always pays reward. :+1: :+1: :+1:

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@MSulaiman
Great Work for accessibility meet-up .

Congratulations for successful event.

Keep it up your good work for humanity. Good work always pays reward. :+1: :+1: :+1:

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@JaneBurunina

@MSulaiman

@Muhammad_Usman

@KashifMisidia

You people are doing great job for accessibility and google map for sake of humanity. Keep it up. Tomorrow there would be a great awareness among the society. It’s would be reward for your efforts. Stay blessed

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Such a wonderful post by you @MSulaiman it was really great time to have all of accessibility champions in your meet up. We appreciate your efforts, keep it up.

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Well done!

I should be an Accessibility champ myself sinceI had to stay without walking for close to 3 months about two years ago. I look out for these things when I go to places to dine out or catch fun.

I will begin to attend the Meetups about it now.

I like how you started off your write up, it was easy to read.

P. S:-Now, I want to know; I have been looking for the young man that invited me to Lahore telling me; “anyone who hasn’t seen Lahore hasn’t lived”. Do you, by any chance, know him? @MSulaiman

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This recap of the last meet up gives me more insights to discuss about the accessibility with Medan Local Guides. I was excited could join the meet up, so I know the one of important thing we missed for disable humans in Medan.

Thank you and keep inspiring us in another meet up @MSulaiman :innocent:

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@KashifMisidia thankyou bhai for your kind words. It motivates me and helps me grow as a Local Guide. You are absolutely right about the attendees. They all made this session very interactive and kept us all engaged. They are the main key of making this event a success.

Keep sharing bhai, you are a source of inspiration for many Local Guides.

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Congratulations @MSulaiman , on your successful meet-up.

You are very good host and quite interactive… The way everyone shared their views is evident how successful the meet-up was…

All the best for future meet-ups…

#OneAccessibility

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No doubt it was awesome virtual meetup for all LGs. Thanks a lot for conducting a such type of meetup.

Md Reazul Hoque

Chattogram Bangladesh

:purple_heart: :blue_heart: :heartpulse: :green_heart: :heart: :+1: :wave: :bangladesh: :bangladesh: :sparkling_heart:

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Dear @MSulaiman , congratulation for successful Accessibility Lahore meetup. Absolutely, one hour was too short when everyone was discussing a positive change which is very much need of the time. We all observed that there’s a lot to do to give awareness to businesses to have accessibility feature so every special person could go out at his/her own.

That’s the essence of providing information on Google maps.

We’ll InshaAllah work on it with the help of Accessibility champions @KashifMisidia and other local guides from Lahore @Muhammad_Usman and @thehmsofficial .

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Hi @MSulaiman

Yes as you said the meetup time whiles away very fast.

In India also people on wheelchair are totally dependable on others and we don’t have the accessibility for them to go on their own.

Thanks the present generation is taking steps to improve the accessibility. Your meetup is one like that.

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@Muhammad_Usman thank you for being part of the session. It is very encouraging for us when our senior Local Guides support us at every level and acknowledge our efforts.

Cheers

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@JaneBurunina thank you for your kind words. We really missed your presence. I hope to catch you in any other Accessibility Meetup. And you’re right we should organize Accessibility walks after pandemics. Activities on such a noble cause will definitely create a larger impact on our societies.

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