rotmanmagazine.ca / 113data is used to help us understand what is missing in terms of
accessibility, and how we can design better spaces and com-
munities. In my mind, data is a tool that should be owned
by the people who generate it — and therefore it should be
transferable and transparent so that we can all benefit from
what we’re contributing to.
Have you and your team been able to sit down and reflect
on the profound impact that AccessNow has had to date?
There are definitely moments when we can see that we’re
actually having an impact. For example, when a city that has
no accessibility data — almost a sort of black hole where we
have no understanding of what access is like there — starts
to become populated with ‘pins’ (data points), that’s amaz-
ing. It lowers the level of anxiety for people with disabili-
ties and allows them to make their own decisions based on
credible, crowdsourced information. I often think of how
we started out with a blank canvas that had no pins, no
users and no community. Now, every time I pull up the map,
I think, ‘Wow; we’re really doing something here’.
People actually write to us about their experiences,
their stories, or the places they’ve gone. It’s pretty amazing
to think that we started from nothing and have been able
to reach so many people on a deeply personal level. That’s
the magic for me; it’s not about convincing people that they
need to buy something or that some specific product is going
to make their life 200 times better — it’s about recognizing
people’s actual needs, and hopefully changing their quality
of life for the better.
AccessNow started because I needed to solve my own
problem (navigating spaces), and from that, it has given oth-
er people an opportunity to vocalize their experiences and
contribute to making change. This has been done in all kinds
of communities in the past, but in the disability community,
it is finally happening now.
What is next for AccessNow—and for you?
We’re looking at a bunch of things, such as working with
municipalities to build more inclusive and accessible cit-
ies across the world. We’re also looking into really exciting
possibilities in artificial intelligence (AI), which is the next
frontier for us.
When the app was launched, a lot of our visibility was
reflected onto me personally — not just because I’m the
founder, but because I’m a user, as well. As a result, a lot of
my work involves reaching out to other people and inviting
them to be a part of what we do — whether that’s a commu-
nity member, a citizen, or someone in the government or
the private sector. I hope that by raising my voice and am-
plifying the importance of diversity in tech — and by simply
existing within it — other people will be empowered to be a
part of the conversation, as well.Maayan Ziv is an activist, photographer and entrepreneur based in
Toronto. She is the Founder of AccessNow, an app that uses crowdsourc-
ing to pin-point the accessibility status of locations around the world
on an interactive map. She also sits on the boards of The Toronto Arts
Council and the Centre for Independent Living. Her 2017 JEDx talk
can be viewed on YouTube. For more visit: http://www.maayanziv.comPeople are not born into the little ‘identity
check boxes’ that we’ve created.