Crowd4Access is an Insight Citizen Science project which aims to provide access information to city users, provided by other city users, via interactive maps. It is a partnership between citizens and professional technology researchers who have come together to map the accessibility of footpaths of Irish cities.

Everyone has challenges when navigating the footpaths of a city. The wheelchair user and the parent pushing a buggy may need access ramps, the runner may need an even surface, the user of crutches may need shorter street crossings, the person with low eyesight may need a good contrast between footpath and the street, whereas the blind may need tactile pavement.

The first in a 3 part workshop, to help to map the accessibility of Galway’s Footpaths, took place via Zoom on the 21st November 2023 at 3pm.

At the first online workshop participants learned about how:

• different people use footpaths in different ways
• to identify major obstacles to footpath accessibility
• to use a smartphone app to photograph footpaths in your area.

Participants were then divided into small groups to map an area of the city using the photo app. At the second and third workshop, participants will review the images from the mapping exercise before inputting onto an open source map the footpaths and such elements as tactile pavements, pedestrian street crossings, bollards and electricity poles.