Online mapping tools can be brilliant.

Brilliant if you’re in the car that is. Even fairly impressive if you’re cycling. But if you’ve got restricted mobility (whether that’s due to a wheelchair, skateboard, pushchair or just really impractical shoes) then they’re not much help at all.

Here at Overlay Media we’re going to build a user friendly map overlay that incorporates gradient and surface data to make avoiding obstacles like cobbles and hills (Queen Square and Park Street, we’re looking at you) easy as. We want to create something that extends peoples’ independence by optimising the suitability of a route to each person’s needs.

So from a technical perspective the most interesting aspect of the research will be how we create something that gives all the important information about topography (smooth, cobbled, gravel) and contours (hills) in a way that is flexible to the needs of a wide variety of people: while those users in wheelchairs might want to avoid ‘challenging’ surfaces or gradients, those on skateboards may well seek these spots out on purpose!

Our initial tests suggest that our background in location and context aware technology provides a workable method of data collection and through this a chance to give minority groups an empowering tool to increase their mobility. In the end we hope that third parties will take the opportunity to develop applications and games using the dataset created.

We have decided to call this project Hills Are Evil! as we believe this captures the essence of the project. While we did have some debate regarding other ‘sinners’ (such as gravel, sand and cobbles) in the end, hills won out!

Right now we’re planning out the best way of collecting the relevant data, so if you have any sources, connections or helpful hints you want to send our way, do drop us a line at hillsareevil@overlaymedia.com Thanks!