Despite the changes in infrastructure and urban planning initiatives, for Maayan Ziv, and countless others around the world still question if the destination or route is accessible. “The reality is that the world is still very inaccessible to people with disabilities,” shared Ziv, “figuring out which spaces are accessible from ones that aren’t can honestly sometimes feel like a full-time job in new spaces.”

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A group of Paralympians are on the path to making the Great Trail of Canada more accessible through a partnership that’s helping break down barriers for those with mobility issues.

Trans Canada Trail partnered with both Canadian Paralympians and AccessNow, an online platform that uses crowd-sourced information to detail the accessibility status of locations around the world.

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Exploring Canada’s urban and rural trails has become a welcome habit during the pandemic, a balm to mind and body. But for many, there are still barriers to appreciating these green spaces. Now, a new partnership between three notable organizations — the Trans Canada Trail (TCT), AccessNow and the Canadian Paralympic Committee — aims to increase accessibility.

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For outdoor enthusiasts and adventure travelers, there are few things better than a truly great hiking trail. Whether it is a beautiful day hike or a week-long journey on one of the world’s top long-distance treks, wandering through the remote wilderness can be a memorable, exhilarating, and sometimes life-changing experience.

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Trans Canada Trail and AccessNow — a grassroots social start-up that provides a navigational resource to review barrier-free areas — have teamed up with the Canadian Paralympic Committee to document accessibility barriers along one of the longest nature trails in the world.

AccessNow based in Toronto, began with its founder Maayan Ziv’s personal experience of using a wheelchair.

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A new project aims to address accessibility concerns for Canadians along the longest recreational trail system in the world.

Trans Canada Trail (TCT) and AccessNow, a Canadian social startup that pinpoints the accessibility of varying spots around the world through an app, partnered with the Canadian Paralympic Committee to examine 13 stretches of trail across the country.

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There have been a lot of discussions around online accessibility in recent years. Happily, it seems like the awareness at most businesses and organizations to make sure their online presence is accessible for everyone – had increased dramatically. While that is great, have you ever wondered how an offline experience at the shopping center, hospital, airport, or even at the local restaurant – could be more accessible for those with sensory or cognitive challenges?

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From prioritizing pedestrian spaces to proliferating online hangouts, the pandemic has made accessibility mainstream. Will it last?

Read the full article on The Walrus

Technology that supports the lifestyles of people with disabilities is becoming increasingly sophisticated, but there’s plenty of room for growth. And one of the keys for improving assistive tech is a simple but often overlooked philosophy: working with those who will use the product from the very start.

To support emerging designers helping to improve mobility, accessibility, and daily life for people living with multiple sclerosis, Novartis recently launched the Innovation Prize for Assistive Tech. Specialist tech and accessibility judges…

Read the full article on WIRED

We’ve all experienced it at some point in the pandemic. COVID-19 has forced us to change our way of doing things, and that involves some new piece of tech. And that tech… doesn’t work so well.

Is it because it was poorly designed, or not designed for you at all?

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[VIDEO] Activist Maayan Ziv talks to Antony Robart about her journey of making the Access Now app to being honoured with the Governor General’s Innovation award

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“I can tell you from my own experience as someone using a wheelchair to get around that it’s very frustrating when you’re trying to go places and you don’t have access to information about what’s actually going to be accessible for you,” says Maayan Ziv, Founder and CEO of AccessNow. “There are countless places where I show up and there’s a step at the entrance or no accessible washroom or whatever it is. Obviously, it makes things really difficult for someone with a disability just trying to live their life.”

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Ottawa, ON – Today the Rideau Hall Foundation announced the recipients of the fifth annual Governor General’s Innovation Awards. These awards recognize and celebrate exceptional Canadian individuals, teams and organizations for their excellence in innovation and their contributions to helping shape our future and positively impact our quality of life. 

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[PODCAST] In this episode of This Matters, Maayan Ziv, disability rights activist and the founder and CEO of AccessNow, a digital accessibility platform for the disabled, talks about the struggles and rights of Canada’s disabled community – and what we need to do to make inclusive and safe spaces for everyone in our collective experience.

Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favourite podcasts.

“There’s no denying that this pandemic has been devastating in so many ways for everyone. For people who are immunocompromised, COVID-19 has brought with it a new level of vulnerability, and increased levels of anxiety, sacrifice and isolation. For people with disabilities like myself, this time has forced us to redesign our lives, such as…”

Maayan Ziv speaks candidly on the challenges COVID presents for people with disabilities — and the opportunities.

“It is such an honor to be awarded the Novartis Innovation Prize. Accessibility is a critical component of establishing a welcoming and barrier-free world for people with disabilities, including those living with MS,” said Maayan Ziv, Founder and CEO AccessNow. “We have come a long way, but we have so much more to do to achieve equity and inclusion. At AccessNow we believe technology plays an integral role in achieving this vision and we are so excited for the next step in our journey.”

Even while facing less access to capital, struggles in the start-up phase and outdated prejudices about women in leadership, women’s entrepreneurship is accelerating within Canada and beyond. In the spirit of collaboration and like-minded missions, Sandpiper Ventures from the east coast and The51 from the west, have come together to launch a new, national partnership to unlock capital and invest in women-led startups across Canada.

[VIDEO] Maayan Ziv doesn’t have to wander far from her office in downtown Toronto to find a business she can’t visit or suddenly be stalled by a step or a door without a push button. But the 29-year-old is turning around these experiences. She’s a tech entrepreneur, who lives with muscular dystrophy.

“Living with a disability means that you’re constantly having to be creative. I have to think about all the gaps in the sidewalks, and all the missing elevators, and all the inaccessible things that could go wrong,” Ziv said in an interview with CTV News Toronto Friday.

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How do we make the world more accessible? And how can that accessibility add value to a business? These aren’t questions many CEOs ask, but for Maayan Ziv, who has muscular dystrophy, they’re pivotal to the success of her business, AccessNow.

AccessNow has been live for four years now and we’ve gained so much insight from the community, from people who have directly benefited or have used AccessNow in some way to do something. They’ve contributed a lot of information through emails, social media or getting in touch in-person. They let us know what’s good and what could be better…

Canada’s federal government has made significant moves to support individuals with lived experience of disability in recent months — from passing the Accessible Canada Act to investing in AccessNow, an app that maps accessible locations across the country. But how can Canadians be better advocates for accessibility on an individual level?

In 2016, Maayan Ziv was part of the Agents of Change: Community Health cohort for AccessNow, her crowd sourced mobile/web platform the shows accessibility information for locations worldwide. Along with the other Agents of Change, Maayan received a $10,000-grant, a one-year membership to CSI, acceleration supports from leading advisors and educators in organizational and business development, and took part in special programming such as Peer Circles and special events.

AccessNow, an online platform that crowdsources information on the accessibility of public spaces and venues, such as restaurants and businesses, has raised $2.7 million from the federal government. The startup, which serves as a community resource for those requiring information about accessibility, offers a TripAdvisor-like user experience that crowdsources the opinions and experiences of its users on various public locations. AccessNow will use the investment to open up the technology’s functionality, pursue community partnerships, in addition to new features that the startup plans to announce later on.

[VIDEO] A Toronto tech startup has garnered the support of Microsoft and new funding by the Canadian government. AccessNow is an app available on Google Play and the Apple App Store, allowing users to discover more than 26,000 accessible and nonaccessible pinned locations in 35 countries around the world.

An accessibility application that aims to break down barriers facing Canadians with disabilities has received a major boost in funding from Ottawa. AccessNow, an online platform that uses crowd-sourced information to show how mobility-friendly buildings and public transit are, will receive $2.7 million in investment from the federal government. Carla Qualtrough, the minister of Public Services, Procurement and Accessibility, announced the cash injection Thursday at a news conference in Toronto. She said the investment is not only a boost for Canadians with disabilities but also for an inclusive economy. 

More than four million Canadians live with a disability. Because many buildings and public spaces were built without accessibility in mind for people who use wheelchairs or other assistive devices, those four million people are unable to live life to the fullest. Maayan Ziv uses a power chair to assist her mobility and knows this problem all too well. But once she realized how many other people faced similar issues to her, she knew she needed to do something about it.

AccessNow, founded by Maayan Ziv at Ryerson University’s DMZ startup incubator in 2015, collects and maps data from users about the accessibility of areas like restaurants, bars and retailers. The app has more than 26,000 locations tagged across 35 countries. The investment, announced by Public Services Minister Carla Qualtrough, was made through the Accessible Technology Program, a $22.3-million fund to be allocated over five years starting in 2017. The company plans to use the funding to grow its team from seven workers to 15 over the next couple years. (The Logic)

Living with muscular dystrophy hasn’t stopped Maayan Ziv from becoming a photographer, activist, and innovator. By crowdsourcing information about physical structures, AccessNow, the app Ziv launched in 2015, allows people with mobility challenges to know what they can expect in a given location before they displace themselves. It has proved so popular that Ziv, 28, won Startup Canada’s Resilient Entrepreneur of the Year Award for 2016. Policy Magazine Social Media Editor Grace MacDonald spoke with Maayan Ziv about accessibility, technology, and where the two meet. 

These barriers to everyday activities are what inspired Ziv to create AccessNow, an app that allows users to track the accessibility of locations worldwide, from restaurants to concert halls. “It’s time to realize that inaccessible places and experiences are not just inconvenient, but they also send a signal that people with disabilities, or anyone who requires accessibility, is not welcome everywhere. To be blunt, inaccessibility, whether intentional or not, is a form of discrimination.”

To expand the conversation further and raise public awareness around the surge in accessible products and services designed over the last decade, we organized a groundbreaking exhibition – ACCESS+ABILITY – which opened in December 2017 to widespread acclaim. Demonstrating how design is providing unprecedented access to a world that now includes over one billion people with disabilities, the exhibition emphasized the rising participation of people with disabilities in the design process—and how giving voice to a diversity of people results in solutions that work better for all.

Mobility is a term the tech community has co-opted to mean everything from transit-as-a-service to autonomous vehicles to what Ford CEO Jim Hackett called “a ‘catch-all’ phrase encompassing all non-traditional businesses.” At its core, mobility is about offering greater accessibility and convenience to more people. But too often that isn’t the case. After we published our story about Lime and Bird’s e-scooter expansion plans in Canada, a reader pointed me to a Twitter thread highlighting concerns over what abandoned dockless scooters mean for wheelchair users.

We are inspired by our community every single day. We have the privilege of working alongside Canadians who are using technology to make the world more accessible and inclusive for everyone. One of these remarkable people is Maayan Ziv, Founder and CEO of AccessNow, a mobile app and website that collects and shares information about the accessibility status of places worldwide.

Recently named one of WXN’s Most Powerful Women in Canada and one of Microsoft’s #MSFTChangeAgents, Maayan is a shining star in our community. To celebrate her work, Microsoft’s Ricardo Wagner – Accessibility Lead Canada, hosted an engaging Q&A with Maayan which we have shared below.

For some people, following an established career path is the way to find workplace success and satisfaction: You get a degree, get a job, and rise through the corporate ranks, with promotions and salary increases along the way. For others, a linear career in a highly structured organization was just never in the cards.

Maayan Ziv is a perfect example of the latter. “I wanted to throw the rule book out the window and figure it out from scratch,” says Ziv, founder and CEO of AccessNow, a for-profit social enterprise that maps the accessibility of places and experiences worldwide.

Melbourne, Australia has held the number one spot for the past several years followed by Vienna, Vancouver, Toronto and Calgary and Adelaide who have tied for 5^th place. After careful analysis, it became apparent that this seemingly diverse and in depth report does not take one critical factor into account: accessibility. As comprehensive as it may be, the report does not examine how livable cities may be for people with disabilities. What exactly has to transpire in order for the lives of people with disabilities to be considered alongside the lives of those without?

[VIDEO] Years of advocacy in the disability community along with technological advances have spurred the creation of more products for people with a range of abilities. NewsHour Weekend’s Megan Thompson talks to New York City’s Digital Accessibility Coordinator about the importance of accessible design and tours an exhibit at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum that highlights these advancements.

Social justice, gender equality, inclusion and accessibility — these are just a few of the things these eight unstoppable women are fighting for. Best of all, they’re living proof that you can make positive change at any age. Prepare to be inspired! 

Many recent technological advancements seem more ominous than optimistic: Alexa eavesdropping on water cooler conversations at work, automation taking our jobs, autonomous vehicles crashing into taco trucks. Or they’re more frivolous than helpful (for example, automated dental floss dispensers). But “Access+Ability,” an exhibition opening Friday at the Cooper Hewitt design museum in Manhattan, fills one with real optimism: It highlights the beneficial ways design and technology are transforming the lives of people with different physical, cognitive and sensory abilities.

The roster of Canadian tech startup founders is endless. To shine a light on this emerging community, we have created a list of 20 names from across the country who are helping to define the Canada’s startup narrative on Twitter. With this list, we aimed to highlight a diverse range of voices from coast-to-coast and from ventures of varying sizes. The one unifier: all 20 individuals are using Twitter exceedingly well to grow their business and be part of the conversation worldwide.

Local advocates who pushed Uber to up its game on accessibility are urging Lyft, which enters the Toronto market in December, to do the same. “Whether it’s Uber or a competitor, looking hard at accessibility is a vital component for any business,” said Maayan Ziv, founder of accessibility-based tech firm AccessNow. “Regardless of who you are, you should not be restricted from a service.”