Wheelmap – Wheelchair Accessible Maps

Halifax Wheelmap- Wheelchair Accessible Maps

Wheelmap – Wheelchair Accessible Maps

Wheelmap is an online mapping application by a German non-profit association, to help promote wheelchair accessible places (currently more than 550,000 points of interests in eighteen different languages have been added) and allow people to find out if a location is accessible or not. Wheelchair Accessible Maps help provide answers to questions such as:

Can some one in a wheel chair reach a specific restaurant? Does a popular pub have an accessible washroom? 

It is a crowd source driven application so anyone can contribute to the project by tagging public places according to their wheelchair accessibility, and add new locations if they know of ones that have not been added yet. The OpenStreetMap based site provides online tools to help people plan their trips more efficiently. Users can use the mapping application to learn about accessible places and share relevant location based information with others. Users can also download wither the Wheelmap iPhone or Wheelmap Android app to use  with their smart phones to help them while out and about.

The quality of information on the online mapping application varies from place to place and seems to be more popular in European countries but has been gaining use here in Canada.

It is also hoped that with public awareness raised through the use of Wheelmap, that more owners of public buildings will be encouraged to improve their location’s accessibility.

Visit www.wheelmap.org and help promote wheelchair accessible places in Canada.

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