The World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that there are more than 1B disabled people worldwide, equivalent to 15% of the world population. Travel is becoming one of the latest frontiers in the journey toward accessibility, and we are seeing more destinations become wheelchair-friendly. In addition to the travel destination itself, there is a need to ensure that the booking process is designed with accessibility in mind.
The IATA Air Hackathon Seattle is focused on helping build solutions to enhance the booking experience for passengers with mobility aids (wheelchairs) and/or tracking or mobility aids (wheelchairs).
The AIR Hackathon will comprise of:
- A one-week ideation phase to prepare your project around leisure and business travel (ideation is available only for registered participants and they will be invited on 14 February 2020)
- A 28-hour coding experience in Seattle, to work on your projects and pitch ideas to a team of industry experts and mentors.
The 28-hour coding experience runs from Feb 21 to 23 at the Microsoft campus in Redmond. You will be able to attend some of the workshops that will take place on-site and gain access to mentors that will support you through the Hackathon experience. I will be involved with the IATA AIR Hackathon Seattle on Feb 21-23 to help participants use the Azure Maps API’s if needed.
I encourage participants to explore the Azure Maps API’s to enable the location intelligence & mobility aspects of the solutions.
Azure Maps makes it easy for all users to navigate an interactive map experience. Users can interact with maps using a mouse, touch, or keyboard. Azure Maps provides screen readers with enhanced descriptions that can combine multiple updates into a single message that is easier to digest and understand. Recently Azure Maps achieved exciting new capabilities & Microsoft certification around accessibility. All apps that use Azure Maps will benefit from the accessibility features that are provided out of the box.
Azure Maps also relies on best of breed content partnerships for everything from the maps data, traffic, real time transit, ride share, to weather data. One of the Azure Maps content partnerships is with Moovit. Launched in 2011 in Israel, Moovit has become the world’s most popular transit-planning and navigation app, with more than 500 million users and service in over 3,000 cities across 94 countries. The company is also a leader in inclusive technology, with innovative work that helps people across the disability spectrum use buses, trains, subways, ride-hailing services, and other modes of public transit.
In addition to offering a consumer app in 45 languages, Moovit has partnered with Microsoft to provide its multi-modal transit data to developers who use Azure Maps. The partnership will enable the creation of more inclusive cities and more accessible transportation and travel apps.
For those of you keen on exploring the Azure Maps API’s for the hackathon, I would like the share the following resources:
- Overview: https://azure.com/maps
- Documentation: https://aka.ms/AzureMapsDocs
- Getting Started: https://aka.ms/AzureMapsGettingStarted
- Code Samples: https://aka.ms/AzureMapsSamples
- Videos: https://aka.ms/AzureMapsVideos
- Blog: https://aka.ms/AzureMapsBlog
- Developer Forums: https://aka.ms/AzureMapsForums
- Azure Maps IoT School: https://aka.ms/AzureMapsIoTSchool
- Case Studies: https://aka.ms/AzureMapsCaseStudies
I also encourage you to watch this episode of the Azure IoT Show with Olivier Bloch and Outi Nyman discussing the Mobility Services in Azure Maps: http://bit.ly/2NMbt61
The documentation for the Azure Maps Mobility Services can be found at: http://bit.ly/332vWZv . I will be doing a short presentation on Azure Maps API’s before the Hackathon begins, and I look forward to seeing you all.