OpenThePaths 2026 Narrations
| Title | Audio | Transcript |
|---|---|---|
| AccessMap | Audio | Transcript |
| AVIV ScoutRoute | Audio | Transcript |
| Walkshed | Audio | Transcript |
| Stewardship Poster | Audio | Transcript |
| Access to Transit | Audio | Transcript |
| iOS Point Mapper | Audio | Transcript |
| Access to Belonging | Audio | Transcript |
TRANSCRIPTS
AccessMap
AccessMap is a trip planner built for you. While most apps chase the shortest route, AccessMap gives you the right route for your needs.
Can’t handle more than a 6-degree slope? Want verbal directions that call out tactile landmarks like benches or bollards? Curious which buildings you’ll pass along the way? AccessMap has you covered—fully customizable so your route works for you, not the other way around.
You can use AccessMap anywhere—indoors to preview your trip in advance, or outside for real-time, turn-by-turn directions. Whether you’re walking, rolling, or navigating with a white cane, you can travel with confidence knowing exactly what’s ahead.
It’s for everyone who moves through the city—wheelchair users, white cane travelers, parents with strollers, or anyone who wants a route that matches their abilities and preferences.
Using it is simple:
- Pick up your phone or hop on your computer.
- Open your preferred browser.
- Go to AccessMap.app.
From there, adjust your settings, preview your journey, or set out and follow real-time guidance built around your needs—not just a generic map.
So why settle for one-size-fits-all directions? With AccessMap, you get more than a map—you get a plan that works the way you do.
AVIV ScoutRoute
AVIV ScoutRoute is built around one core idea: Accessibility Validation, Improved Verification. AVIV in AVIV ScoutRoute stands for exactly that. It is your tool for capturing real-world accessibility data right where you are. Instead of relying on outdated or incomplete maps, you can record what you see, when you see it, and make that information visible to planners, engineers, and your community.
Spot a raised curb where there should be a ramp? Find a crossing with no tactile paving? Or discover a smooth, accessible path worth highlighting? With AVIV ScoutRoute, you can log it in seconds. Add details, upload a photo if you want, and your observation becomes part of the shared data that shapes future improvements.
AVIV ScoutRoute also includes a screen reader mode that helps screen reader users, especially blind and low vision community members, map their own data independently. In this mode, the number of quests shown at a given time is intentionally limited, making the experience simpler, more focused, and easier to navigate non-visually.
It is not just about individuals contributing data. Through AVIV ScoutRoute, agencies can define what data is collected, who collects it, and how it is validated. This means communities and agencies can work together in a structured way, ensuring that the data is both inclusive and reliable.
It is not just reporting. It is building better maps together. Every barrier or asset you document helps make routes safer and more usable for everyone: wheelchair users, white cane travelers, parents with strollers, or anyone who relies on accessible pedestrian infrastructure.
So the next time you are on a street and think, “People need to know about this,” pull out AVIV ScoutRoute and make it part of the bigger picture.
Walkshed
Walkshed is a tool that helps you see the impact of accessibility, or the lack of it, on how people move through a place. It can show, for example, where a wheelchair user can get to in five minutes, compared to where someone who does not use a wheelchair can get, or where a motorist can reach in the same amount of time.
It is not just about distance on a map. It is about understanding how infrastructure, barriers, and missing information shape real-world mobility.
For transportation planners, Walkshed is especially powerful. It allows them to insert or remove barriers and instantly visualize how those changes affect accessibility. What happens if you add a curb ramp? What changes if you close a sidewalk gap? Walkshed makes it possible to compare scenarios and identify where improvements will have the greatest impact.
This directly supports resource allocation decisions for programs such as Safe Routes to School and Vision Zero. It also supports grant making and grant applications by providing objective, visual evidence of need. Agencies can clearly show where gaps exist today, what population is affected, and how a proposed investment would expand access.
Walkshed turns accessibility from an abstract idea into something measurable, comparable, and actionable, helping communities make smarter, more equitable, and more defensible funding decisions.
Stewardship Poster
This research examines pedestrian infrastructure data in practice, focusing on institutional challenges and systematic under-maintenance.
Pedestrian infrastructure data is critical for ADA compliance, accessibility, pedestrian safety, planning, prioritization, and public transparency. It helps agencies understand who can actually reach key destinations, not just who lives nearby. It supports data-driven decisions about where to invest public dollars and how to improve safety for nondrivers.
Yet today, persistent data gaps continue to disadvantage transit-dependent and nondriving travelers. ADA transition plans require collecting and tracking this information over time. Travelers need to know whether they can safely travel up a hill in a wheelchair or navigate an area with a white cane. Planners need reliable data to prioritize projects. First responders need accurate curb and access information.
Unlike roadway data, pedestrian data often does not have consistent lifecycle stewardship.
In this study, we examined how pedestrian data is created, used, and maintained. We conducted 38 semi-structured interviews with planners, engineers, ADA coordinators, GIS specialists, and program managers across multiple state DOT and local contexts.
We treated pedestrian data as infrastructure shaped by organizational routines, technical tools, and accountability systems.
Our findings show that problems occur at every stage of the data lifecycle, but they are most severe at governance, approval, and update.
During collection, non-standardized practices make it difficult to build trusted datasets. Responsibilities are often fragmented. Data is frequently collected at a planning level, not at the detailed level needed for design and compliance.
During processing and use, integration is labor-intensive. Manual data merging is common. Workflows are often project-specific rather than system-wide. Planners need network-level and corridor-level analysis, but tools often support only isolated fixes.
In quality and validation, agencies rely heavily on aerial imagery and manual review. Challenges include completeness, accuracy, and keeping data up to date. Verification needs to support ongoing updates, not just one-time correctness.
The biggest gaps appear in governance and accountability. There is often no clear ownership for approving, publishing, and updating pedestrian datasets. Project closeout rarely results in authoritative dataset updates. ADA planning frequently operates in parallel to planning and construction rather than being fully integrated.
In short, pedestrian data does not fail only at collection. It breaks down when routine processes are missing, when tools require manual stitching, and when cross-division ownership is unclear.
This study makes three contributions. First, it offers a lifecycle-based taxonomy of failure points in pedestrian public right-of-way data. Second, it shows which phases fail most and why. Third, it proposes pilot-ready interventions aligned with DOT governance, such as required closeout updates, metadata standards, and shared dashboards.
The key takeaway is simple: governance clarity and operational feasibility are essential. Without them, pedestrian data cannot reliably support accessibility, equity, and accountability at scale for nondrivers.
Access to Transit
This work asks a simple but powerful question: In each census tract in Washington State, do people have frequent transit, and can they walk or roll to everyday essentials?
Transit alone is not enough. Sidewalks alone are not enough. What matters is whether people can actually reach the places they need safely and reliably.
The map groups every census tract into four categories based on two measures. First, does the tract have frequent bus service? Frequent means buses arriving at least every 15 minutes during peak weekday hours, every 15 minutes during weekday daytime, every 60 minutes at night, and every 60 minutes on weekends. Second, can people walk or roll to essential destinations such as grocery stores, healthcare, and schools?
Each tract is colored to show whether it has strong transit and many essentials, strong transit but few essentials, weak transit but many essentials, or weak transit and few essentials. This makes gaps visible at a glance.
The goal is not just to measure service, but to measure access.
When frequent transit exists but essentials are not reachable on foot or by rolling, riders still face barriers. When essentials are nearby but transit is infrequent, nondrivers are limited in opportunity. True access happens when both are present.
This dashboard allows agencies, advocates, and community members to search for a tract, see which routes serve it, and examine the number of reachable services. It turns high-level planning questions into tract-level, data-driven insight.
This work helps answer a core equity question: Are we building systems that truly work for nondrivers?
By combining transit frequency with pedestrian accessibility, we move beyond assumptions and toward measurable, accountable access.
IOS Point Mapper
Sidewalk documentation is still done the hard way. Crews walk the corridor, measure with tapes or wheels, take photos, and then re-enter notes later. It is time-consuming, repetitive, and difficult to scale.
iOSPointMapper changes that.
With just an iPhone or iPad Pro, you can collect, validate, and publish sidewalk data to OS-CONNECT in a single pass, with no manual re-entry required.
Instead of multiple steps, you walk once with your phone. The app automatically detects and measures what it sees in real time. It can capture sidewalks, poles, traffic lights, and traffic signs. It also records critical accessibility attributes such as width, incline, and cross-slope. These details help determine whether a path works for wheelchair users, people with strollers, white cane travelers, and others navigating pedestrian infrastructure.
As you walk, you see a live overlay showing detected features. When it looks right, you capture it. Then you review, accept or reject detections, make corrections if needed, and submit a clean, standardized record. The surveyor always has the last word.
The data flows through a clear pipeline. Field capture happens in iOSPointMapper. It is stored and versioned in a Workspace for OS-CONNECT. It is then published and released through the Transportation Data Exchange Initiative, and finally visualized and used in tools like Viewer, AccessMap, and Walksheds.
Who uses this? Transit agencies, city and county ADA teams, public works staff, community partners validating conditions, and researchers validating quality at scale. What do you need? An iPhone or iPad Pro, workspace access, and about 15 minutes of onboarding.
In short, iOSPointMapper makes mapping faster, more consistent, and ready to power accessibility planning at scale.
Access to Belonging
The Access to Belonging Wall is where you can explore, play, and share, while seeing firsthand how transportation access shapes people’s daily lives.
Panel 1 welcomes you with a chutes-and-ladders inspired “active transportation” board game. Pick a game piece, draw a scenario card, and see how far or how far back you go. Crosswalk spaces help you move ahead, while construction tape spaces set you back. Each turn reflects the reality that small changes like adding a crosswalk or facing unexpected construction can dramatically impact someone’s journey. The panel closes by asking: What makes transportation truly accessible for disabled community members?
Panel 2 brings you real voices from around Washington.
Amy from North Bend relied on public transit after an injury, but infrequent buses turned a short meeting in Carnation into a 7.5-hour round trip.
Deborah from Clarkston uses paratransit but faces unsafe intersections, missing curb ramps, and no sidewalks, making it hard to even reach transit.
Nick from Liberty Lake calls for tactile markings at Spokane transit hubs so blind travelers can navigate without disorientation. Each story is paired with a walkshed map, showing exactly how accessible or inaccessible their communities are for pedestrians.
Panel 3 turns the focus to your experience with an interactive matching game. Connect traveler identities such as wheelchair users, cyclists, avid walkers, parents with strollers, transit riders, and white cane users to barriers like steep inclines, missing curb ramps, no tactile paving, or confusing wayfinding. See how different travelers often face the same obstacles, and compare travel times.
Many of these activities are here on the wall and available in digital form, so you can enjoy them in person or online through the Access to Belonging section on our landing page, or by scanning the QR code.
And if you’re curious to learn more, chat with a Taskar Center team member here at the booth. We’d love to share how your insights and experiences can help shape transportation systems where everyone belongs.