By: Amira Zubairi
While technology-based startups are increasingly tackling problems in sectors like healthcare and education, there is one thing startups tend to overlook as they develop innovative products and services: accessibility.
Startups may be creating cutting-edge technology that solves major problems, but this technology isn’t always accessible or even beneficial for people with disabilities.
Seeing the need for greater accessible technology, two startups at Ryerson University’s Digital Media Zone (DMZ) have built applications and hardware to provide people with disabilities with access to technology and resources that can make entering public spaces easier for them.
AccessNow
In 2015, Mayaan Ziv, a graduate of Ryerson’s master of digital media program, launched AccessNow, an application that uses crowdsourcing to collect and share accessibility information about restaurants, bars, transit stations, schools and other places of business in Toronto and beyond. The app allows users to search for a specific place or browse a map to discover what locations have the accessibility features they require.
“The idea is that we’re gathering information about the accessibility status of places in Toronto, in Canada and around the world,” said Ziv, a co-founder of AccessNow. “Anyone who is interested can go to AccessNow and begin rating places and about the accessibility of those places. Does it have a ramp? Does it have an elevator? Does it have a step at the entrance? Pretty much anything you can think of that is about accessibility.”
“As someone living with a disability in Toronto, I don’t want to wait 10 years for people to tell me that everything is accessible or is not accessible”
Ziv, who uses a wheelchair herself, was inspired to start AccessNow when she began her digital media program at Ryerson. In her first week, she was eager to spend time with her classmates; but, when her classmates decided to go to an off-campus bar, she wasn’t sure if she would be able to go with them because the information about the bar’s accessibility was not available.
In 2005, the Canadian government passed the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA), which states that by 2025, everything in Ontario is supposed to be accessible. Although progress for the disabled has been made, Ziv says she cannot wait eight years to find out what is accessible and what isn’t.
“As someone living with a disability in Toronto, I don’t want to wait 10 years for people to tell me that everything is accessible or is not accessible,” said Ziv. “I want a solution today.”
These factors, she says, was a reason for her to see how technology could be a resource for accessibility information for people with disabilities.
Creating apps with information about the accessibility of public spaces can create a full picture of what accessibility in Toronto looks like. According to Ziv, AccessNow allows anyone to pin locations on a map: green shows that a place is accessible and red shows places that are non-accessible. She says that Ryerson University and its surrounding area have been entirely mapped out for students and faculty who may require information about the campus’ accessibility.
“It is a resource that everyone can use and we encourage that,” said Ziv.
Komodo OpenLab
AccessNow’s technology supports access to physical places, but there are many people with disabilities who can’t even access technology itself.
To provide people with disabilities access to technology, Biomedical zone-based Komodo OpenLab recently launched its first product, Tecla. Tecla is an assistive device that gives people with limited mobility, such as spinal cord injuries or cerebral palsy, the ability to fully access smart devices including iPhones, Androids and tablets.
According to Mauricio Meza, a co-founder of Komodo OpenLab, their company brings accessibility to those who cannot physically control devices by traditional means. Whether it’s requiring a switch, a button or a blinker, Tecla’s hardware allows users with different forms of limited mobility to use smart devices in a way that meets their needs.
“People who develop technology should be more aware of what needs to be done for that technology to be accessible.”
“Whatever movement someone has, our hardware enables users to have a variety of different devices,” said Meza. “By giving them access to smartphones and tablets, we’re giving them access to all the functions that everyone else is using like communicating from email, text messaging and using social media.
Meza says that Tecla is being used by nearly 3,000 people in 23 countries, but Komodo OpenLab’s team always first tests Tecla and its new features with a Ryerson student with a disability in order to receive feedback on whether the device works well or not.
In coming months, Komodo OpenLab is hoping to work with student services at Ryerson’s Student Learning Centre to see if other students with disabilities can begin using Tecla to access digital products and services easily.
Making Technology Accessible
Komodo OpenLab and AccesNow are working hard to bring accessibility information and accessible technology to people with disabilities, but both startup’s co-founders Ziv and Meza say that there is a need for more tech-based startups to create technology that is accessible.
Ziv says that within Ryerson’s DMZ and the larger startup ecosystem, people are starting to realize that accessibility in technology has an important role to play in “enabling people.” But often times, entrepreneurs and product designers forget the concept of accessibility when building their prototypes.
“What happens is that often…we exclude people with disabilities from that equation [of technology] the same way we do in the physical world,” said Ziv. “It’s like ‘Oops, I built something that’s not accessible.’ Accessibility matters and it’s important for people to realize that before they start building something.”
“We’re not addressing just anyone. This is a real need and it actually touches on human rights.”
Meza agrees and adds that overall, technology should be more accessible but startups have to think about this from the beginning.
“People who develop technology should be more aware of what needs to be done for that technology to be accessible,” he said.
Komodo OpenLab and AccessNow are building innovative products to help people with disabilities, but the opportunity to launch startups that address the lack of accessibility in technology and other services is growing.
“We’re not addressing just anyone. This is a real need and it actually touches on human rights,” said Ziv. “When people with disabilities experience barriers every day in their lives realize that there is now a platform that could enable them to do things, this can spark a further conversation about change.”