November 27 Press conference “Barrier-free Map of Ukraine: how technology helps to create accessible space”

More than 70,000 facilities have appeared on the interactive Barrier-free Map. This is data from this year's accessibility monitoring in communities, which ran from June 1 to August 31. How the landscape of communities is changing in terms of inclusivity criteria can be seen in real time thanks to the company LUN, the technology partner of the Ministry of Development of Communities and Territories of Ukraine. The monitoring focused on two key components: assessing the accessibility of facilities in communities and plotting barrier-free routes on a digital map. Every location checked receives a corresponding mark: barrier-free; partly barrier-free; with barriers. For people for whom it is vital to know whether there are barriers at a particular location or institution, such an interactive map is extremely important. It provides reliable and open access to the data at all stages of the work. At the same time, for security reasons, facilities of critical or vulnerable infrastructure designated by the communities are not shown on the map. Yevhen Komarov, deputy head of the Institute of Veterans, asked who can make changes to the barrier-free map and was told that only authorised persons can do so. But anyone can leave feedback and impressions about facilities already added to the map. Such public oversight does not go unnoticed: feedback and reactions are taken into account in order to make Ukrainian spaces barrier-free and more comfortable.