GoGenie

Go Genie was about answering these questions: Why isn't there a database of accessibility information for any place I can think of? If I'm going to the theatre, are there a disabled changing facilities? If I'm going to a cafe, are there steps to get in? Lifts? Sign language on offer? Oddly enough, such a thing didn't exist. It surprised me too.

I collaborated with Alison Smith from Pesky People, who successfully pitched to Arts Council, NESTA and Nokia for funding to build a mashup of Foursquare data and access information. Web app, cross-platform mobile apps (Symbian, iOS, Android), API.

Go Genie was one of the projects in NESTA's Reboot Britain programme, from Pesky People and Telford District Council. NESTA described it as “an online tool that provides accessibility information to help people plan a journey to a destination or venue”, drawn from crowd-sourced contributions and aimed at people with specific access needs.

Writing about Ruby application stacks in 2011, Stef described Go Genie as “An ambitious project to create a structured WIKI for accessibility information, initially for all UK cultural venues” and listed its stack. Database: CouchDB; ORM: CouchRest; application framework: Padrino and Rack; models: CouchRest Model; views: HAML; style: Compass; AJAX: jQuery; app server: Thin; web server: NGINX; source control: Git; deployment: “git push heroku (!)”; host: Heroku.