Yesterday evening we were happy to see a successful Wheelmap and OpenStreetMap Mapping party on the occasion of the UN International Day of persons with disabilities (Dec 3rd), organized for the EU-project CAP4ACCESS.
The event started with a talk given by Stefan Hahmann providing an introduction to the Cap4access project, followed by a presentation of specific mapping techniques that can be used to tag accessibility on Wheelmap and on OpenStreetMap. After this introduction the group split into two teams. One group tagged points for Wheelmap on the University Campus area in Neuenheim. The other group edited OpenStreetMap sidewalk information from the PCs in the warmth of the CIP-Pool in the KIP. Furthermore, the newly implemented street imagery of Mapillary within the OSM iD editor was tested. We prepared a cheat sheet containing all relevant OSM tags for this purpose.
The event finished with a presentation on OpenStreetMap data quality which included a demonstration of tools (yosmhm, hdyc, OSMatrix) that have been implemented by our former group members Pascal Neis and Oliver Roick.
We were happy to see some already experienced mappers from Karlsruhe and Heidelberg joining the event. But also some newbies came to learn about mapping with Wheelmap and OSM. Altogether there were 11 people actively contributing to OSM, 5 of those being newly registered OSM users.With their help, nearly 100 objects were updated to include sidewalk and surface information, with 10 of those being new OSM features. Using Wheelmap, the accessibilty of 16 places has now been documented.
Special thanks goes to our student assistants Sarah Labusga, Sophie Crommelinck and Steffen John for their support in the organization of the event. We are also grateful for all the volunteers that came and helped making this a successful event.
Here are some impressions of the event:
Furthermore, our project partners ZSI in Vienna and mapping for change in London organised similar events that also took place yesterday. You may get an impression of their events on Twitter #mapforaccess.
You may also read the report of this mapping event in RHEIN-NECKAR-ZEITUNG! Please click here.