I know what you’re thinking - “he just can’t stay away can he?”. Well you’d be right! Having had such fun at the first Social Innovation Camp and since then working with pal Denise on her vision for Enabled by Design, I couldn’t resist putting in a couple of ideas in for Camp 2.

So obviously I’m rather excited (if a little sheepish) to say that one of the ideas, AccessCity, has been chosen as one of the six ideas that will be worked on over the weekend of 5-7 December by myself and (hopefully!) a gang of socially minded geeky types. Its an idea that has been floating around for a little while now in various forms, both in terms of the early idea submitted to the first camp, but this has developed in my mind over time given the work I have been doing with Enabled by Design and others (including organisations like the Movement Design Bureau and great events like Scripting Enabled) over the past six months or so.

I’ve posted the idea again below and would really appreciate any early feedback, thoughts and offers of support you might have (whether to come and work on the team over the weekend or outside of that). I really am looking for others to work with me on this and knowing the amazing array of skills out there am sure we could come together to make something great. Just leave a comment below or drop me an email and off we go!

In case you want to get involved with the camp but AccessCity doesn’t quite do it for you, why not check out the full list of projects chosen for the weekend here and even vote for one of the four projects which are currently open to voting to become the seventh project.

(Oh and by the way, I still REALLY want to make ShareHome happen too so any thoughts and offers equally welcome there as well! Cheeky I know but if you don’t ask…)

[Image: Image Zen]

The idea

To develop a site to enable a user-generated view of London (in the first instance, but with the ability to be rolled out nationally and beyond) from an accessibility perspective.

We would hope that this addressed the notion of accessibility primarily from the perspective of Londoners who may have a disability or are traveling with children in the first instance, but the notion of accessibility should be broadened to include the needs of as wide a group as possible.

While there are numerous more institutional perspectives on what represents accessibility in London, including Transport for London’s admirable efforts through their route planner, this information is often created from an ‘expert’ or engineer’s perspective without as much input from Londoners and their real life experience of getting around the city as there should be.

This will therefore also inform public and private organisations in London as to where the people moving around London face difficulties and enable them to target improvements.

What is the social need or challenge the idea could address?

It is clear from both the aspirations of the Mayor, his agencies such as Transport for London and the work of organisations in and around London such as London Travel Watch, getting around the city remains a challenge for Londoners who may have a disability or are traveling with children, shopping or luggage.

While the number one priority for both pressure groups and the transport bodies themselves remains to make public transport truly step free wherever possible (and rightly so), there are a number of other accessibility issues that face a wide cross-section across the capital.

In September this year, Mayor of London Boris Johnson urged “all London businesses, including shops, restaurants and hotels, to start thinking now about how they can make their services as accessible as possible in time for the 2012 Games.”

There are also other areas of access and the public realm that impact on Londonders, for instance access to public toilets. Whether from parliament or civil society, there is pressure mounting on public and private organisations to ensure that public toilets remain open and accessible to all.

And there are bound to be a whole host of other accessibility challenges that I can’t think of that need to be brought to the attention of organisations that can start to address them, as well as giving people facing these challenges an opportunity to get involved, share work around and contribute to working with these organisations to resolve them.

What’s really new about the idea?

There are plenty of official sources of information about access and the city, however very little user generated content. Where user generated content exists, it is across a number of sites (from Flickr to Facebook to travel sites such as tripadvisor) but never has it been brought together in one place to act as a really simple, useful central source of information, advice and group pressure from ‘people like me’.

AccessCity would provide the chance to show that what meets the needs of official (accessibility) targets doesn’t necessarily meet the needs of the people out there using the city on a daily basis. Change needs to be accelerated and better meet the needs of the people facing the urban assault course.