The Innovation Lab An Accessible City

We successfully pitched our "Access Everywhere" initiative to Google on May 16th and the following is the link to the video:


We're planning on holding an event to bring awareness to the issue that may include a hackathon, accessibility walk, and accessibility summit likely in the Fall. We'll be working with Google over the coming months leveraging their experimental technology to create... more »

Light the peace bridge in red and green during the Christmas season.

Replace feeder buses with self driving cars to bring people to their nearest LRT station. Use path finding and realtime request monitoring to automate carpools to make self driving feeder vehicles more efficient. Leverage the high smart phone market penetration and low barrier to entry for mobile and web app development to create a multiplatform ride requesting application. Use built in GPS and location knowledge to... more »

List staff names and departments again. Many times our 311 calls goes into the virtual waste bin and we never get follow up calls or emails.

Controlled pedestrian crosswalks should be standardized across the city. That is, the lamps should be placed either on the north or south side of the street, and east or west side of the avenues.

 

For example, if I walk down 15 Ave SW from 8 St to 14 St, I use two controlled crosswalks. But one is on the south side (8 St) and the other is on the north (14 St).

Update the Plus 15 systems with consideration of universal design to to improve accessibility for all, to help overcome visible and not so visible barriers to accessing the network.

For people that are unable to visit areas and venues within Calgary in person, create virtual reality tours of those areas.

To encourage connections between people of different backgrounds. Gather people together. One person has flowers, they take the flowers to a stranger and ask them a question they've always wanted the answer to. The person answers the question and gets the flowers. And they repeat. (this idea is from my table at the civicinnovationyyc launch.

Make the zoo free for those wearing cowboy gear during Stampede.

Be My Eyes is a mobile app that connects blind and visually impaired with sighted helpers from around the world via live video connection - http://www.bemyeyes.org/

Over 385 thousand sighted people have signed up to provide assistance, yet only 30 thousand people are receiving help.

We could help spread awareness of tools like these to assist more visually impaired people in being even more able, resourceful, and creative... more »