Friday, September 22, 2017

Age Friendly Seattle: Will RantWoman pitch

RantWoman is considering what to pitch or how to connect with an interesting pitch for the Age-Friendly Seattle hackathon.
RantWoman would definitely be up for working on some kind of accessibility scorecard or way to assess accessibility for a service, app, location....

RantWoman is into maps. RantWoman wants to see whether there is a team that cam put together some maps of locations showing nearby bus stops and giving opttions for routing from bus stop to destination. RantWoman wants maps that include information such as are there segments which are too steep for a manual wheelchair to travel unaided.  RantWOman does not want to promise enough detail for every blind person but wants at least a few landmarks.

If someone has access to 3-D printing, RantWoman would also find it interesting to play around about making tactile maps at different resolutions. RantWoman has access to Braille conversion software but hacks would probably be necessary to use Braille.

RantWoman collects data about the transition point where people for various reasons, vision, tremors, hearing loss, can no longer drive and need either to switch to public transportation or to get really friendly with Uber, taxis, and still driving friends. Just having to switch from a parking garage to the route from a bus stop to a front door can be very disorienting.

RantWoman collects anecdotal data from a number of faith communities about the clumps of elders who all ride to services with one person who still drives and everyone (except heartless RantWoman) keeps praying that the driver keeps passing her (odds are) eye exam. RantWoman always prays that if someone loses their license there will still be ways for clumps of people to get around on Sundays when the volunteer shuttles do not tend to run.

These clumps of people may or may not have thought to apply for paratransit, may or may not make it through the application process, and may or may not have the paratransit program try to guess whether they really truly can get there on the bus. Hello. People qualify for paratransit. SOME of them can ride the bus, but there are plenty of reasons locations might be inaccessible such as being up or down steep hils from bus stops. The other point is the social benefit of travelling in clumps though here RantWoman can be predicted to go off about lack of public transit vehicles that can accommodate multiple people with walkers or wheelchairs.

RantWoman collected data when RantMom moved to Seattle about her giving up driving voluntarily. RantMom was SO much happier even though learning the bus was a trial.

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