entertainment Archívum

Wheelchair sailing on lake Velencei in Hungary

2016-09-132016-09-13 by tibor

Last week team Route4U went sailing.

One of our friends told us about the wheelchair sailing opportunity at Agárd, on the shore of lake Velencei. They operate a Rehabilitation Centre at the lakeside where people can move in for a couple of months while they are learning to cope with challanges of their new life. The Centre is also next to a small harbor where residents can (and should!) try sailing.

How it works

With the help of the super friendly local staff, we prepared our boats, put them on water and got in. Zoltán, our teammate got in the boat with the help of a nifty crane next to the pier. All of us wore life jackets, and at least one person of the two in every boat had to know the basics of sailing.

As we were told it was nearly impossible to tip over with the boat but still, the author of these lines was not so sure about that when we tilted 45 degress multiple times 🙂

This is how it went, and this is how it looked:

Everything is given at Agárd what’s needed for a fun and exciting day with or without a wheelchair. Our goal with Route4U is the same. It’s easier to be active, when circumstances are optimal. And when they’re not, you need information to know how to bring the most out of the situation.

Found out more about Route4U here.

Santa has switched from sleigh to wheelchair (from late 2015)

2016-10-052016-09-07 by tibor

(this is a translated article from late 2015)

Santa has already left Lapland… and it depends on You, when he’ll arrive!

Categorize places (Points Of Interests – bars, cafés, restaurants, gov. offices, hospitals, etc.) by deciding if it’s possible to enter with a wheelchair or not. By saving your survey result in our game, you help Santa with 1 km route, on his way from the North Pole. The distance is around 3000 kms to Budapest, so we’ll need you to check on 3000 places if you want him to arrive in time.

All the accessibility information you provide during the game is immediately shown in the Route4U application and online map and is real value to the wheelchair user community.

How does it work?

1. On the main page, click on the bottom-right arrow.

2. Choose the area where you want to play. The system will determine your position automatically, but it won’t always work due to phone and browser settings. Shall this occur, you can set your location by moving the map.

3. Choose the place you’d like to categorize and look for stairs at the entrace.

4. Finalize your choice by choosing one of the three colours.

5. Be proud of yourself, you’ve just created value! 🙂

Meaning of colours

No stairs at the entrance, doorstep is 3 centimeters maximum

There is a maximum of 1 stair at the entrance, not taller than 7 centimeters

There are more than 1 stairs at the entrance, or step is higher than 7 centimeters

Information Accessibility

Did you know that information about places’ accessibility is at least as important as phisical accessibility itself?

There are hunders of thousands of places on Hungary’s online map, but majority of them doesn’t have any info about accessibility. Now with a little cooperation we can achieve huge difference.

How can I join?

You can join the game on guruljszabadon.hu. You’ll hear about the latest news on our facebook page. If you like the initiation, and you suppose some of your friends might be interested in helping a good cause or spreading the word, please invite them too, so we can make the world a bit more convenient place.

Our fast and cost-efficient accessibility mapping at Sziget Festival

2016-09-012016-08-31 by tibor

“Sziget” is held every August in Budapest, Hungary and it’s been voted best European Major Festival multiple times. The 25th Sziget attracted over half a million visitors from all over the world, a small percentage of them were wheelchair users or members of other disability groups. All the stages and venues, camping areas, bars and fast-food restaurants are located on an island of the river Danube, hence the name “sziget”, which translates to “island” in Hungarian.

Sziget accomodated an Ability Camping with big, cleaned-up camping spots, accessible toilets/showers and they had also built – together with the company of the same name – an “Ability Park” where abled and disabled festival-goers could walk in their peers’ boots by trying games, solving quizes, drawing, walking in a maze, climbing walls and cycling blindfolded.

Festival nights can be quite chaotic, where accidents happen 🙂 Everyone with broken, bruised limbs or other movement-impairing injuries ended up in the Ability Camping. These people, together with other wheelchair users, could use Route4U, our iOS smartphone application to search for and navigate to accessible venues, toilets and lookouts inside the festival’s huge area. They could use the app in Budapest, and also in their own cities, after arriving back home. Find out more about Route4U here.

Survey

The island is a recreational area throughout the year with patches of forest, muddy or gravel paths and lots of grass. Our first step was – since we use OSM data in our maps – to check and verify the already available path and sidewalk data of the island. After our field survey, surface smoothness data were added to the network. Just one day before Sziget opened, we surveyed the stages, art installations, food and drink places, and other venues. We even ventured to the Northern tip of the island, where people could swim in the Danube and enjoy the cool shades of the riverside forest.

All the Points of Interests (POI) in Route4U have an accessibility (entrance) and an accessible toilet attribute. We had only set these “green” on the venues without steps, and on the few accessible toilets and showers, to make sure our users find what they were looking for: accessible places in the festival area. All the “grey”, not yet verified POIs on our map are waiting for community feedback. After they are evaluated, they appear in the application with their new colour.

Even though the festival area is not yet connected to the Budapest Route4U sidewalk network, we surveyed routes from the festival entrance to low-floor public transportation stops.

Use and feedback

We reached our goal: Route4U was the best festival venue finder smartphone solution for Sziget 2016. After a rainy night some of our users even marked osbtacles, such as huge puddles or untraversable muddy spots. In these areas, our route planning function worked just fine, as the suggested route evaded the problematic areas.

We received some useful feedback too: for colourful events like music festivals, the map needs to be merrier too, especially our icons (POIs). Go ahead and download Route4U here, we have accessibility data available in your city too.

Sziget in pictures: