Jiawei Wu

According to data from the United Nations, more than 1 billion disabled people will live in cities by 2050. A large percent of them are wheelchair users, but why can't we see so many wheelchair users on the streets. One of the main reasons is that the current urban environment is not easily accessible. I conducted a workshop with some wheelchair users and found out that they are unwilling to go out and explore the city because they don't know which part of the city they can experience freely. Sometimes they will encounter unexpected difficulties like large-angle slopes, unexpected stairs and low quality pavement. For them, going out can be troublesome. This uncertainty stops them from going out. What’s more, after the interviews I found it is also hard for the local council to find and determine which part of the city area they need to improve because the workload is huge.

Since the top-down solution is impossible, I switched my mindset and found a bottom-up way to let all citizens join and map out an “Access Urban Environment Map” for disable citizens together by playing a game. What’s more, this map can also inform government about where to put disable facilities efficiently.

In Access City Builder, players can see many digital characters on their mobile phones. Players need to help digital characters to expand their territories in the digital world. The ability of those digital characters is the same as a wheelchair. So when characters encounter ramps that are too steep, ditches that are difficult to cross, and borders that are too high, they cannot pass, and players need to help them pass by placing digital facilities in these places. Through constant play by players, digital characters can gradually expand their digital territories. Players can earn tokens. The system will also record the location information in the city about where are accessible and where need to have more accessible facilities.

All stakeholders can benefit from Access City Builder; wheelchair users can have an "Access Urban Environment Map", the local council can use all their money to build accessible facilities instead of trying to find where to build them, access facility builders can have more cases to do.

In the future, I want Access City Builder can serve not only wheelchair users but also other people who need an accessible urban environment. For example, we can use the principle of crowdsourcing games to help check the continuity of tactile paving.

To achieve that, I need to develop different gameplay forms and bring more kinds of digital characters into the world of Access City Builder. With those characters, we can build an accessible future together.