Citizen Science – Crowd4Access Update
Despite the challenges of COVID restrictions, Bianca and the team have moved ahead with the Crowd4Access project to bring accessibility mapping to all users of Irish streets, whether they use a wheelchair, a cane, crutches or a guide dog.
The team have now completed four experience-sharing workshops. Reports from these sessions are emerging, with some very interesting observations so far, on everything from tree roots to sandwich boards and the increasing COVID-related issue of tables springing up outside restaurants.
What emerges are pictures of our cities that are very different for different users – the project promises to provide valuable insights for city planners as well as mapping that will give all users more power to negotiate their surroundings.
All four reports will be aggregated and open for inputs from organisations that support people with disabilities in the coming weeks.
The fixed urban elements cited in the document will be used by the Crowd4Access project to plan data collection about the accessibility of Irish cities. This data will be collected via a citizen crowdsourcing initiative later in 2020.
Right now, Bianca and Venkatesh are organising the first pilot for the mapping workshop, before the process is opened out to a bigger group.
Stay tuned..

A Q&A with Bianca Pereira on Crowd4Access, an Insight Citizen Science project