People with physical impediments often find themselves stuck outside some of the popular venues as they would not provide access to their wheelchairs or help them get inside with ease.
In an initiative, energy firm Sasol in partnership with some public organisations however, has come up with a solution to the problem. Sasol has launched a website and mobile application to help physically challenged people search what venues in Qatar are accessible and how much.
A simple search on the App will tell you if a certain venue is accessible for wheelchair users or if it facilitates access to people with visual or hearing issues or learning difficulties. The information appears on it in the form of colour codes detailing if the venue is fully, partially or not accessible at all.
So far the app includes 50 destinations in Qatar that have been thoroughly audited by Sasol. Those that have not been audited appear in grey colour code. The app developer aims to complete the audit of about 70 venues in all till August.
However, it has provided an option for users to rate venues as accessible or not — based on their personal experiences.
Launched in partnership with Ministry of Municipality and Environment (MME), Qatar Tourism Authority, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, and the Translation and Interpreting Institute and Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy (SCDL), the App also identifies the venues that need to be made accessible.
Jack Saba, General Manager of Public Affairs at Sasol, told Community in an interview that the idea of developing such an App was in the making since ‘Definitely Able’ conference that happened in Qatar last year.
“One of the sessions was about accessibility and how accessible is Doha and we found that this was an area which needed support. There is no information available on accessibility and most of the venues here are not accessible,” Saba says.
“We started brainstorming on this and started discussions on how to handle the issue. From this originated the idea to create a website and a Mobile Application. We also planned to carry out an audit of accessibility of venues through professionals,” says the developer.  
Accredited accessibility auditors were brought in who started auditing locations. They started with tourist locations like hotels, shopping malls, parks, exhibition and convention centres.
The process, Saba says, is ongoing in that they will keep on auditing more locations in more sectors, including education and health.
However, some 50-70 locations are nothing compared to thousands of locations in Qatar. So the developers have included in the App a section for users’ ratings or comments.
Anyone can check the accessibility at a certain venue according to specific information and guidelines provided on the App and then put it up on the App. Based on that feedback, the developers can then rate the venue in terms of accessibility for disabled.
The App will help people with physical disabilities a great deal. By checking the accessibility, they will not have to go there in the first place. This of course, does not take away the disappointment they would be coping with.
“(However), before they leave, they can now check if the venue they are heading is accessible or not. They can simply log on to the website (www.accessibleqatar.com) or open the App and they can find if the place is accessible for them because it all depends on the type of disability someone is suffering,” says Saba.
There is information available according to different types of disabilities. So they will not go to this specific place; instead, they can search and find some alternative place which is accessible.
“We have the partnership with the MME and it works in a way that we provide the information about the venues with no accessibility for disabled and they come up and provide the support to make that venue accessible,” says the Sasol GM.
Auditing of the venues, he says, involves detailed report by the auditor on the accessibility of a venue in terms of different essential spots that need to be accessible besides suggestion on how it can be made accessible.
They, then, issue this report and provide it free of charge to the locations. “We just give it them and we hope that they will take our recommendations seriously and will work on them to make their location more accessible to the physically challenged people,” Saba adds.
Auditing all locations in Qatar might take years, he says, but they are thinking of employing some other ways that can make it quicker. For example, they have held discussions with Qatar Tourism Authority (QTA) and will probably train a team from them.
And then, this team will go and audit more hotels and other locations. In this way, they will be able to cover more locations in a short period of time.
Everything they do at Sasol in Qatar, Saba says, is free of charge. They have something similar as Qatar E-Nature Application where you can view all the nature in Qatar, the flora and fauna found in the country such as birds, insects, mammals, reptiles and marine life.
It is all free of charge and it is available in both English and Arabic.
The Accessible Qatar App is now up and running. But Saba says as it just started last week so there would not probably be a lot of users’ rating or comments on it.
“We need community’s support in it especially from the people with disabilities because they are the ones who know exactly what kind of accessibility they require or expect from a venue. Their comments are invaluable for the success of the App in addition to our audit,” says the Sasol GM.
He says they started spreading awareness about the App and how it works way ahead of its official launch last week. More than a month ago, they started visiting institutions (for persons with disability) such as Qatar Society and Cultural Centre for Blind, Qatar Society and Cultural Centre for the Deaf, MADA, Shafallah Centre and others.
They visited and held discussions with them, and made presentations. “We got their feedback before we launched the App so that we can improve it further. It is for them and it should suit their needs. We are involving them very closely in this initiative,” says Saba.
Accessible Qatar is available for download on iOS, Android and Windows phones, and a desktop version, if available on its website.