Three apps and one website help travelers with a variety of disabilities identify potential obstacles, get audio descriptions in 185 languages and book custom trips.
Sasha Blair-Goldensohn is on a tech-driven mission to help people with disabilities travel easier. Mr. Blair-Goldensohn, a software engineer at Google, was paralyzed from the chest down in 2009, when a 100-pound tree limb fell on him in Central Park. Since then, his perspective as a wheelchair user has inspired him to build out Google Maps accessibility features and to push for all-around inclusivity.
“There’s a huge swath of the population that isn’t visible — not because we don’t want to be out there in the community, but because out of sight, out of mind,” said Mr. Blair-Goldensohn, who is now the disability inclusion feature lead at Google.
According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 1.3 billion people — or 16 percent of the world’s population — experience significant disability. That’s more than 70 million adults in the United States.
Many of them rely on Google Maps features that show stair-free entrances and provide audio guidance to navigate streets and find places like restaurants, A.T.M.s and accessible transit stations. Mr. Blair-Goldensohn has helped oversee the introduction of wheelchair-accessible transit routes and, more recently, stair-free surface routes.
Google Maps isn’t the only mapping app for navigating accessibility when you get to an unfamiliar city. AVIV ScoutRoute customizes routes for people with limited mobility or vision, relying on user feedback and A.I. to account for factors like sidewalk width, steepness, surface composition, curb ramps and landmarks.
Here are three other tools that can ease the way for travelers with disabilities.
RollMobility
After Rachel Zoeller became a wheelchair user in 2019 as a result of a spinal cord injury, going out to meet friends took strategy and research. She would call a restaurant to ask about accessibility, get verification, then arrive to find out, say, that the door wasn’t wide enough or the tables were too close together — or there was carpeting, which can take more shoulder strength to wheel across. She joined a team creating RollMobility, a free app, to address those critical details.
The RollMobility app aims to help users navigate those types of spaces by offering crowdsourced details like table and bar heights and door weight — heavier doors can be harder to open with limited mobility. Since the service began in 2023, more than 20,000 places in over 100 countries have been evaluated.
Be My Eyes
Eleven years since Hans Wiberg, who is blind, created Be My Eyes, the app has registered more than 10 million volunteers to help guide people who are blind or have limited sight through everyday life. Collectively, that crew speaks 185 different languages. The site has nearly one million blind or low-vision users.
Here’s how it works: Users who need help log on to the app any time of day, anywhere in the world, and they’re connected with a volunteer who speaks their language. They then point a smartphone camera at their surroundings and the volunteer provides a real-time description of what’s happening and can engage in conversation. There’s also an A.I. feature that allows the user to share a photograph, and a chatbot will describe what it sees.
Wheel the World
Standard travel agencies often overlook disabled travelers’ specific needs, but services like Wheel the World, a web-based travel agency, offer traditional booking services as well as travel packages that can include accessible transportation, tour guides and specialty equipment like amphibious wheelchairs and adaptive kayaks.
More than 800 freelance “mappers” have gathered about 225 data points per hotel for more than 6,000 properties in 50-plus countries, with the majority in the United States, creating a vast database of important details like bed heights, door widths, bathroom accessibility and dimensions. Users can match their needs with a hotel’s features.
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