Exploring environmental measures in disability: Using Google Earth and Street View to conduct remote assessments of access and participation in urban and rural communities.

ABSTRACT: The Americans with Disabilities Act has been in place since 1990. Yet, we still do not know the actual levels of accessibility in the nation, how access varies across communities or over time, or how it influences participation in community life. The present two studies explored the use of Google Earth (GE) and Google Street View (GSV) imagery as a database for examining the accessibility of rural and urban cities and towns in the United States. We developed procedures for selecting places in a community to observe multiple access features. Study 1 reports the findings from assessments of 25 communities across 17 states. We observed ≈50,000 m (31 miles) of pathways through the observed places. The Combined Access Score (CAS) averaged 65% across these communities. In Study 2, we evaluated 2

SUBMITTER: Seekins T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9397703 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature