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Wheelchair Accessibility Mapping in Regina - Some Thoughts

@Malle_Yeno depending on how the user uses the data machine readable tags are not necessarily usefull. To work out the example of the second story of the mall, I would mark the mall as accessible, after making sure the second story can be routed to in an accessible way, but only with a wheelchair:description (preferebly in as many languages I would be able to) that says to go trough the next building tonthe second floor. However, I would not feel comfortable changing https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:wheelchair=limited to yes unless I had changed prett much all the prerequisites.

Disclaimer: I am not a wheelchair user and I also don’t know any.

Why Geometry Matters

I think there might be a solution to this: official crosswalks get drawn with just the crosswalk, with the end nodes implied to be kerbs (if not explicit). This way the length and direction of the crosswalk is known, without a separate sidewalk. An example can be seen at https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1417027017. A routing engine would need to look wether there is a https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:highway=crossing crossing the way it wants to route on at the place it wants to give directions to cross. A map could choose to display the crossing or not to display it. Latter is current practise in the default osm map.

Using this method you can add route to easily cross the street wherever you want, but at the same time route through official crosswalks when and where relevant. Off course a crosswalk that is simple and to everyone as expected, only a crossing node should be enough.

Btw I did not add this way as an example, just found it, then used it.