It can be difficult for people with limited mobility to navigate a city. Finding restaurants, restrooms and even walkways with wheelchair-accessible infrastructure can be a stressful process for many in a big city like Denver. Joe Foster, co-creator of the Roll Mobility app, is well aware of those challenges and has set out on a quest to help change that.
Roll Mobility is a smartphone app that serves as a database for users to rate restaurants, public spaces, businesses, trails and parking lots based on their accessibility for people with limited mobility. Upon arriving and opening the app, Roll Mobility will prompt users to answer a set of questions about the location’s accessibility, such as if it has ramps, a step in front of the door, automatic door openers, a low-top table and smooth floors.
“When you click on a location that you’d like to rate, it pops up 10 simple questions that rate everything from the front door, the doorways, whether or not the location has stairs, if it has multiple floors and those kinds of things,” Foster said.
Foster says he got the idea to create Roll Mobility during his time as a volunteer coach with the United States Paralympic Nordic skiing and biathlon team. While on a trip to Breckenridge, Foster was having trouble finding a restaurant with accessible infrastructure. Upon finally finding an accessible restaurant and being reassured by the staff over the phone about their accessibility, the team quickly found that wasn’t the case.
“We got to this restaurant and realized that there’s three steps to get inside and the elevator was a relic from the 1970s,” Foster said. “People’s wheelchairs couldn’t even fit inside of it.”
That experience struck a chord with Foster, who started discussing it with the Paralympic athletes at dinner. Unfortunately, the athletes reported that this happens all too frequently.
“I was sitting at the table with [the athletes] and said this doesn’t happen if you’re in a big city or at home,” said Foster. “And they told me this happens everywhere we go. We always have this issue. If we really want to know if a place is accessible or not, then we send somebody to go look at that place for us.”
Foster had the idea to cut out the middleman by creating an app so people can log a location’s accessibility to help eliminate the stress of navigating cities.
“I got back and sat down over a beer with my other co-founder, Shane [Blandford], who’s good with the tech side of things,” said Foster. “We said that we’re in a good place and a good time where the technology is there to make this happen and create [this app] in an easy, simplified way.”
Since the Denver-based app’s creation, it’s skyrocketed in popularity across the world. Foster says that they have 35,000 users in over 40 countries. As Roll Mobility’s user base has expanded both locally and internationally, Foster’s been enjoying seeing others use his app to help others.
“There’s a user whose username is ‘the owl of Stockholm’ and has left 30 to 40 reviews in Stockholm, Sweden,” Foster said. “Just seeing these little pockets where you can tell people are really passionate about this and it’s really important to them, it’s been awesome to watch that happen.”
Although the company is based in Denver, Roll Mobility’s current objective is set in New Orleans, Louisiana. They’ve partnered with Make Good, a nonprofit that uses technology to solve accessibility issues, to map the entire French Quarter for accessibility ahead of the Super Bowl in the Bayou next February.
“[New Orleans] is our current push right now,” Foster said. “We actually have a leaderboard up right now in New Orleans so if people leave reviews, they’ll be automatically entered to win prizes. We’re really just trying to help mobility in the French Quarter before the Super Bowl.”
More locally in Denver, Foster says the city is in a good place when it comes to accessible infrastructure and Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance.
“Denver itself has made some pretty significant improvements,” Foster said. “I think the people here, especially as active as they are, are maybe more aware of accessibility than in other states.”
Specifically, Foster mentions the Craig Hospital, a neurorehabilitation and research center, as a catalyst for Denver’s advancements in handicap-accessible infrastructure such as ramps and elevators. Craig, located in Englewood, specializes in helping those with severe spinal cord and brain injuries, which often can lead to mobility issues.
“We do have a really robust system of accessibility here and accessibility programs,” Foster said. “Craig Hospital being here really lends itself towards people understanding accessibility a little bit.”
Nationally, Foster says that other states are lagging behind Colorado when it comes to accessibility in their cities.
“We, as a country, do not do a great job of meeting people’s needs head-on in [the accessibility] realm,” Foster said. “The ADA has been around for not very long. Unless you are going about completely renovating a location, a location does not really have to become accessible if their location is inaccessible. This is a global issue for people.”
Although change can come slowly, especially when it comes to construction and infrastructure, Foster’s efforts with Roll Mobility have made life easier for countless people with limited mobility. An act as simple as creating an app to help navigate a city can make all the difference, as Foster’s learned over the last year.
“[The most satisfying thing] has been just hearing people who use the app, who are telling us that they have less anxiety going out and they’re actually getting out more,” Foster said. “They’re reconnecting with their communities and it helps them feel more confident in going out and being places.”
