Maayan Ziv
An App to Map Accessibility
Text from poster
Maayan founded AccessNow, a crowdsourced app mobilizing communities by mapping the accessibility status of thousands of locations in over 30 countries. Activist, photographer and entrepreneur, she continues to challenge norms and work within her community to increase awareness of disability issues and improve accessibility.
Additional Information
In 2015 Maayan launched AccessNow out of the need to solve her own problem. What began as a response to her frustration when trying to navigate inaccessible places, AccessNow soon grew to become a mission-oriented social start-up. Within just a couple years AccessNow has vocalized a movement for inclusion, inviting people of all abilities to contribute to the platform. As CEO of AccessNow, Maayan has created a powerful shift in thinking about the importance of accessibility in our world, from accessible technologies to infrastructure, public policy, media and communications. To date AccessNow has shared accessibility information in over 35 countries.
An influential public speaker who is often in the media, Maayan collaborates with private sector companies as well as government and not-for-profit organizations. She inspires leaders dedicated to raising the profile of accessibility for all. On August 1, 2019 the Government of Canada announced a $2.7M investment in AccessNow to focus on technical development, growth and scale.
Maayan Ziv’s research on accessibility was partially funded by NSERC.
