Italy is not a simple country for travelers with disabilities. Lonely Planet says it in the first line of the chapter dedicated to the accessibility of Italy: between cobblestones and sidewalks blocked by scooters, lifts that are too narrow and poor services for those with sight or hearing problems, there is still a lot of work to be done to make as many places accessible to all.
A fortiori, it is essential that people who have special needs (are the 3.15 million Italians with disabilities, those traveling with young children in wheelchairs or the elderly) have access to reliable and up-to-date information when they want to try a restaurant, book a hotel room, move to a new city for pleasure, business or necessity.
Services like Google Maps already provide some details on many activities and points of interest, but often rely on what is stated by the managers of the premises and reviews. Now there is a new app that wants to meet the need for complete information on accessibility by eliminating subjectivity as much as possible: it’s called Willeasy, and it’s an all-Italian reality.
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How Willeasy was born
First thought 6 years ago by William Del Negro, Friulian businessman suffering from dwarfism, Willeasy defines itself as “the first Italian ecosystem of accessibility” and provides a search engine to find the most suitable place based on needs and an app that allows you to map the various places (from car parks to museums , from restaurants and hotels and libraries), detecting large amounts of specific data on their accessibility. In a broad sense: that the service is used by a disabled or elderly person, a family with small children or traveling with animals, or even someone with a food intolerance, the service is designed to meet as many needs as possible.
“In Italy alone, according to our calculations, there are about 20 million people who have these needs, and one in 3 stays at home or always goes to the same places to avoid having to deal with difficulties related to the lack of precise information – Del Negro told us – This is why we provide objective data on the accessibility of places. The data we collect is the result of research carried out with people: we asked them what they need, what information they need to choose where to go, and based on that we created detection systems through an application. We are now forming a network of detectors, which includes both people who work for us and partners who espouse our cause. After that the data ends up on our search engine, Willeasy.net, where it is possible to see this information divided by areas and by category “.
At the moment there are 1235 surveys carried out, compared to 42 detectors qualified and 206 users who participated in the surveys. Thanks to a collaboration with the local institute for surveyors, all the parking spaces for the disabled in the city of Udine have been mapped, divided by type of flooring, measures, any impediments and obstacles to keep in mind. But Del Negro’s team thinks big: in 2020 two important pilot projects were planned that included museums and hotels all over Italy, then postponed due to the outbreak of the pandemic.
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Prospects for the future
“The goal, in the medium and long term, is to give people the opportunity to create their own path – the founder explained again – To know where to go if I want to visit a city: where to sleep, where to eat, where to park, which stops of public transport use. To have information available, but above all up-to-date and accurate. You don’t need to know if there is a ramp if you don’t know how leaning it is, or that there is a bathroom for the disabled if there is a step to reach it “.
Such work, of course, has a cost: according to Del Negro’s calculations, to carry out a massive mapping of the economic activities and places owned by the Municipality in the various cities the cost is around one euro per inhabitant. 70% of this sum would be invested in hiring the unemployed, to be educated in more inclusive thinking and trained to carry out the surveys. In the words of Del Negro, “in addition to improving the lives of people who are looking for useful information to move, we are also able to create jobs”.
One of the roads that the Friulian startup is following are i European calls, but Del Negro is also in dialogue with the administrations of large cities, such as Milano e Lisbon, in Portugal: “Unfortunately, accessibility is something that many people fill their mouths with to make a good impression, especially in the public sector. In practice, however, it is not so easy: in Udine, for example, they have just renovated the station and there is an elevator for only two tracks out of 8 ”. Instead, “the fact of go beyond the regulations and ask people what they need it’s what really can make life easier ”.
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