Accessible Places, Google Maps tells us where we can go with the wheelchair

Our travels changed. In the past doing the “navigator” meaned juggle between water, coffee in the termos, snacks, games to kill the time, but, especially, it meaned the old and unconfortable paper maps. A short moment of glory was lived by the satnav, digital devices equipped with Gps which are able to guide us around the world. They are obsolete too. Today a click is enough, sometimes not even it, a vocal request to the virtual assistant, and our same smartphone brings us wherever we want. Google Maps is one of the application, often of default, and, probably, one of the best navsat around. Accessible places is, instead, its new function, which will help the users with disabilities, it tells you where you can go with the wheelchair.

The story of Google Maps

Google Maps debuted in the 2005, but it had a long way in fifty years. Google Maps, accessible from the website or by the mobile application, contains the street maps of almost the whole planet.

Obviusly, it’s possible to track our own way, from one point to another, by using different means of transport. It’s possible to look for interesting places around us (restourants, monuments, shops).

The maps can be viewed in the satellitar version, even if the images date back to the end of the ’90s. Afterwards, Google Maps doubles itself. Google Heart was born, it joins the satellitar images with the aerial pictures and the survey datas and it creates threedimensional virtual images.

The service Google Street View, instead, brings us straight on the streets, with images at 360° of many areas of the world, especially in the main cities and metropolitan areas of the Europe and North America. Who never meet a Google Car while filming the streets. And who didn’t try to be part of Google Street View?

But Google Maps goes over the edges of the planet Earth. The projects Google Moon and Google Mars were born with the purpose to map, respectively, the surfaces of the Moon and of Mars.

Finally, thanks to the images of the space telescope Hubble, even Google Sky was born.

Accessible places

An endless and unprecedent success, so, the one of Google Maps in the world of the digital navigator. But to stay on the cutting ege, we must have a special attention for all the users.

With the purpose to help the users with disabilities the function “Accessible places” was born, with which, Google Maps, tells us which are the places accessible with the wheelchair.

At the moment the service can be used in the Usa, United Kingdom, Australia and Japan, but it will be soon available in many other countries. In the world there are about 130 million of people on a wheelchair and Google Maps wants to be an important means for all of them.

How does Accessible Places work on Google Maps

To use this function it’s enough to go on the settings of the application or of the website of Google Maps and to tick the voice “Accessible Places”.

Now, that the function is active, every time that we will look for a place in the maps it will indicate us all the accessible places with the wheelchair: bars, restourants, cinemas, museums, etc.

“Today Google Maps has informations about the accessibility in wheelchair for over 15 million of places all over the world. This number is more than doubled since the 2017. With this function is easier to find and to give informations about the accessibility with wheelchair to Google Maps”.

All the places thought for who is in wheelchair, the access ramps, the toilets for disable people, the seats on places like the cinemas, now are easily findable on Google Maps and they are signed with an icon of the wheelchair.

This post is also available in: Italiano