TECHNOLOGY
PUTTING TOILETS ON THE MAP
Raymond Martin, Managing Director of the British Toilet Association, gives us a bit more insight into the new UK Toilet Map that the organisation has launched in association with Changing Places, in a bid to help disabled people find accessible and available public toilets across the UK.
It has long been recognised that the BTA is the only independent organisation representing all aspects of toilet provision and usage. We act as a vehicle for change within the washroom industry and attempt to represent the vast number of different user groups who are severely affected by the continuing decline in accessible and available public facilities across the UK as a whole.
Working with private and commercial suppliers as well as these groups we have an immediate knowledge of the pressures and change responders that many of the providers are facing in these very austere times and the BTA is assisting many organisations to find solutions to future needs.
One special area of focus for us has always been accessibility – and particularly those individuals living with Profound and Multiple Learning difficulties (PMLD) and their families/ carers. Hygienically clean and well provisioned toilets are an extremely essential element for their lifestyle. Being able to locate one of these facilities quickly and easily either from home or when they’re travelling is vital.
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The BTA has been a member of the Changing Places Charter group for some years now and recently we were delighted to become partnered with the Mencap and Pamis organisations to instigate a project to find a solution to replace the very basic Changing Places toilet map system that was currently being operated on the CP site. Like many other current toilet mapping systems it simply threw pins on a map from a database that had not been looked at or updated for some time.
So together we set up a ‘Toilet Map Group’ to discuss all the issues related to finding and mapping these Changing Places sites. We looked at other map providers and reviewed the do’s and don’ts as well as the significant problem of accuracy. Both ‘if’ a toilet was still open/operational/ fit for purpose and ‘where’ the toilet actually was – was the pin in the right area never mind the right street?
Systems that are based on postcodes are extremely inaccurate and therefore anyone suffering with major mobility issues cannot rely, or take a chance on arriving into an area and finding
the toilet closed/shuttered/chained or even worse no longer available or accessible. So our system had to be designed to allow us to accurately position the pins and then apply constant updates with relevant information on opening/closing times, internal provision, and telephone numbers and contact details.
In addition, we recognised the fact that our user would be travelling to various locations and holiday destinations that they were totally unfamiliar with. So we had to develop and incorporate a Route Planner into this system to allow them to quickly identify other special CP units along their journey.
The TM group appointed a fantastic group of enthusiastic programmers from Velocity 42 and in September 2013 we began the process of meeting and discussing how the map needed to work to address the issues being faced by this considerable range of individuals and how we could display everything simply, accurately and concisely so that everyone could easily log on and use it.
Tomorrow’s Cleaning December 2015 | 51
Photograph:courtesy of Clos-o-mat
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