RolMaps - wat is het?
RolMaps is een onderzoeksproject van deelnemers van ’s Heeren Loo in samenwerking met de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. Het doel is om de toegankelijkheid voor rolstoelgebruikers van winkels, horeca en andere openbare plekken in de stad Groningen in kaart te brengen. Uiteindelijk worden deze gegevens via een interactieve kaart van Groningen beschikbaar gemaakt voor een breder publiek. De kaart is online vrij toegankelijk.
In de eerste fase van dit project is een website/app ontwikkeld in samenwerking met cliënten van ’s Heeren Loo, een zorginstelling die zorg biedt aan cliënten met niet-aangeboren hersenletsel, doofheid met complexe problematiek en chronische neurologische aandoeningen.
In de volgende fase, zijn wij op zoek naar andere rolstoelgebruikers die deel willen nemen aan het onderzoek door (onafhankelijk) data te verzamelen voor RolMaps. Zo kunnen we samen de toegankelijkheid in Groningen in kaart brengen.
Hoe kan ik meedoen?
English summary
In our Mapping the Inclusive City/RolMaps project, we collaborated with a societal partner, i.e. ‘s Heeren Loo, an organization that provides care and housing for people with acquired brain injuries, deafness with complex problems, and chronic neuromuscular diseases. When bringing to light the everyday experiences by people with disabilities in the city, we first used arts-based, visual methods to allow for a meaningful way of collaborating in the research that did not focus as much on speech. We used a smartphone-based system which enabled our co-researchers to record their experiences in the city independently. Specifically, we developed the app 'RolMaps' using a hybrid version of the ArcGIS-based FieldMaps and Survey123 to record the participants’ personal assessment of the accessibility of shops, cafés, restaurants and other amenities.
Our wheelchair co-researchers had an active role in developing the focus and questions in the research, developing the data collection method including testing different versions of our tool, collecting data both as a group as well as independently in the city, and assisting in the data analysis and disseminating the results.
Excerpt from the related article (van Hoven et al., 2024).
Sneak preview
We have received a JTS Grassroots Grant to continue mapping the accessibility of amenities in Groningen. This involves analysing, visualising and sharing geospatial data from our smartphone based data collection app ‘RolMaps’, co-created with students and societal stakeholders. The app records wheelchair-users’ personal assessment of the accessibility of shops, cafés, restaurants and other amenities in Groningen. With the JTS grant, we will further develop this work and finalise current prototypes to make both raw (digital) data as well as visualisations and analyses widely accessible using digital platforms.
The JTS Grassroots Grant provides an opportunity for the team to continue the societally relevant research done in collaboration with wheel-chair users. The right to the city and urban accessibility is a complex societal issue, and people with disabilities have long remained marginalised, even absent. Data collection through the ‘RolMaps’ app has enabled exploring everyday experiences of and by wheelchair-users and more specifically, the opportunities and challenges they encounter while making use of amenities in Groningen. Sharing this knowledge will be beneficial to improving the accessibility of amenities for wheelchair-users in Groningen.