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:
- Introduction of the attendees
- A brief presentation Accessibility in Lahore
- 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:
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
