Mapping Access is a great resource and place to get ideas and help on wonderful mapping projects which can incorporate accessibility. According to their website they are a “participatory data-collection and accessibility mapping project of the Critical Design Lab. Informed by Disability Justice, intersectionality, environmental humanities, and critical GIS frameworks, the project uses mapping as a critical tool for iterative world-building.” Their broader body of work includes a podcast, experimental protocols, and workshops.
One main aspect I like about Mapping Access is their take on crowdsourcing, which they describe as “Critical Crowdsourcing”. Crowdsourcing is popular in DH as a way to gather information and data but mapping access asks additional questions:
- How do typical modes and structures of data collection condition who participates and who is left out?
- How can we understand participants as critical thinkers, and not only as those who record objective truths about the world?
- How can distinguishing between types of expertise in crowdsourcing enable us to work toward social justice?
Mapping Access can provide information and help in several areas if you are interested in getting involved with them. They can help in the following areas:
- Campus Mapping: Creating rich visual and textual maps of university and organizational campuses
- Urban Activist Mapping: Mapping public spaces and developing spatial stories about public belonging
- Teaching and Learning: Integrating mapping pedagogy into the classroom, the lab, and public experiments.
Some projects Mapping Access projects:
- Nashville Feminist Collective partnered with Mapping Access to work toward more accessible meeting spaces and events. The collaborative project has two goals: first, to encourage critical dialogue about disability and access among members of the Collective; second, to understand and challenge the role of built and social environments in the exclusion of marginalized people.