While some people choose a restaurant for their amazing lasagna or their fabulous apple martinis, someone else chooses a restaurant over another simply because it’s nice and most important, accessible and Raul Krauthausen, a German social marketing expert, knows this very well. He is the founder of Wheelmap.org, a revolutionary online map which allows users to rate places such as cafes, bars and libraries worldwide according to their accessibility.
A year after its launch this German website is growing fast, obtaining unimaginable results (the site has seen their usual 10 thousand hits a month rocket to 100 thousand) and proving the potency of the idea behind it. Krauthausen, who is affected by the bone condition Lobstein syndrome, is one of the estimated 45 million citizens in 25 European countries with a long-standing health problem or a disability.
He had his revelation in a Berlin cafè with a friend, when he realized that he had chosen that place because he knew it had wheelchair access, not because of its coffee.
“Almost every establishment has a website with the opening times, prices and services on it. What is lacking, however, is information about how accessible it is.” Said Krauthausen, explaining that for people relying on a wheelchair, going somewhere new can become a real nightmare, if upon arrival it turns out that the place has no accessible toilets or no wheelchair access.
“It was yet another example of how physical barriers can shrink a person’s world. It was at this point I realised that a map with wheelchair-friendly places marked on it would be really useful.”
And wheelmap.org is very useful indeed. 120 thousand places have been rated worldwide up to now and the Wheelmap now boasts its own free App for Smartphones in 12 languages.
