How the Sociability app works 📱

Our three pillars: find, tag, share

With our app launching next week, we want to showcase how Sociability can make it quick and easy for you to find, add and share accessibility information for local venues.

In particular, we’ve designed Sociability to have three key functionalities:

1. Finding accessible venues
2. Tagging accessibility information for venues; and
3. Sharing accessible venues with friends & family

Here, we’ll go through the key elements of each and share a little preview of what the app looks like and how it works. Keep your eyes peeled for more screen shares in the coming days and weeks! Remember, Sociability is about being social, being inclusive and empowering your friends, family and the wider community. The more you find, tag and share, the more you help make world more accessible!

1) Finding your accessible place

If you’re looking to find an accessible venue, we suggest searching in two different ways.

1. explore accessible venues on our Sociability map by scrolling around;
2. search for a specific venue by typing its name and location, or its venue type and location, into the search bar.

When exploring, you’ll see a series of orange Sociability pins on the map. These indicate the venue has accessibility information, so you can simple click on it to see if it’s suitable for you!

When searching, you could search for a specific venue’s name eg, “Barefoot Bakery, Oxford” or “Cafes in Oxford”. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, try adding more detail on the location — particularly, the suburb and city (eg. Shoreditch, London)

If you’re wondering about the difference between orange and grey Sociability pins:

• an orange pin means the venue has accessibility information;
• a grey pin means it has no accessibility information yet.

Remember, for either type, you can always add more accessibility information from your visit — through tags, photos and/or reviews!

In any case, once you’ve located a venue on the map (either by exploring or searching), you can click on the venue’s pin to see ‘venue details’. Here, you’ll find its accessibility information laid out by focus area — eg. entrances, interior spaces, toilets, visual, hearing and sensory accommodations etc. Simply look for the tag that is most relevant to you!

You’ll also see there are plenty (fingers crossed) of photos to view as well! All our test users have commented that photos are super important for deciding whether a venue is accessible or not.With our app launching next week, we want to showcase how Sociability can make it quick and easy for you to find, add and share accessibility information for local venues.

2) Tagging accessible venues (Tags, photos & reviews)

And this is the perfect point to segue into our second pillar: tagging accessible venues. So, let’s pretend you’ve visited a venue that isn’t tagged yet (ie. one with a grey Sociability map pin).

When adding tags, you can help a lot of people in a lot of contexts by filling in the first part of our tagging process. This is focused on collecting details about the venue’s entrance and interior spaces. Given the importance of these two factors, having this information available first will help the most people with the least amount of effort.

For those who are keen to go to the next level, we’d love you to continue adding information about more specific areas (eg. details about stairs, lifts, toilets, sensory accommodations and staff). These are by no means less important details, but they’re a bit more specialised and not everyone will need to know the nitty gritty details in order to make a decision (eg. knowing that there are stairs versus knowing how tall the stairs are specifically).

To start tagging, simply click the blue banner towards the bottom of the ‘Accessibility’ tab on a venue’s profile. It unimaginatively says ‘Add accessibility tags!’ Once you’ve started tagging, simply select the relevant tags as answers to the questions we ask. For some questions, you can only select one tag — for others, select all that apply. If you’re unsure of something, simply leave it blank! Only a few questions are mandatory and we’ll remind you of which ones these are with a red asterisk.

At the end of each section, you’ll be prompted to add a photograph. If you can, please take the extra few seconds to do this! Photos really are one of the most helpful resources. As a general rule for taking helpful photos — stand far enough away to get a clear picture of the space and try to capture everything you’ve tagged (e.g. door and ramp etc), so someone can verify your tags against your photo before they decide to visit!

In addition to tags and photos, a further way that you can add helpful accessibility information is by leaving a review. These aren’t TripAdvisor or Google-type reviews — we don’t need to know if you liked the coffee, although that’s great to hear. What we care about is how accessible the entire experience was. Shed some light on whether the staff were able to help you, whether the ramp was smooth or gentle enough to use independently, what the sights & sounds & smells were like inside. Every review adds another helpful point of information to give your fellow users a greater insight into that venue’s accessibility.

3) Sharing accessible venues

Our third pillar focuses on sharing accessible venues with friends & family. This is central to our emphasis on building a passionate community and kickstarting a change movement. For us, empowering everyone to make room for inclusion in their own communities is crucial to making Sociability a sustainable solution to this widespread social problem!

In short, you can help share accessible venues in three simple ways:

1. once you’ve visited a venue — or better yet, tagged its accessibility! — simply hit share and send it to your friends via WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, text or whatever you use;
2. create your very own Sociability team from your Sociability profile, then simply add people to your team to share venues that you’ve tagged or reviewed, and to encourage some friendly competition; and
3. keep tabs on all your favourite venues in your profile and share the list with friends & family. This way, anyone in your network looking for an accessible venue can quickly trawl through your recommendations list to find some hidden gems.

But it’s not all work and no play. The more you tag, review, share and favourite — the faster you’ll earn special Sociability badges and fast-track your pathway to becoming a Sociability Superstar!

Originally published at https://www.sociability.app on August 26, 2020.