Bath improves accessibility with a campaign spearheaded by volunteers

Accessible Bath is offering the chance for residents to help improve the information available on this historic city’s wheelchair accessibility.

A group of volunteers consisting not only of long term residents, but also students from Bath Spa University as well as those with limited mobility gathered together to launch the project that uses crowd sourced information to help build an accessibility map of the city.

The project uses a tool called Wheelmap that not only allows their progress and the information collected thus far to be freely available, but also allows others to add to the bank of locations they are gathering, to continue to map the entire city. The group of over 20 volunteers have rated 708 locations thus far, with 60.8 % of the initial area they wish to cover being logged. 

Though starting small, only logging locations in a 2km by 2km area around Bath’s Guildhall, they have much grander plans that include not only the entire city but also North East Somerset. With such information readily available, those with limited mobility who rely on aids such as stair lifts in the home will have better prior knowledge to plan routes and trips to this beautiful city.

Though the entire city is a UNESCO world heritage site (the only city in the UK to hold that distinction) the local government has made efforts to overcome the difficulties of archaic streets and cobble stones. Shop mobility service allows those with limited mobility to rent electric scooters and powered wheelchairs to ease getting around the city. This coupled with Accessible Bath’s efforts should ensure any visitor will not only have the facilities available to them, but also the information available to use them correctly. 

Image Credit: Steve Cadman