I love New York. When I was younger, the city was my playground. You could find me on any given weekend catching brunch with a friend at a café, going to an East Village restaurant for dinner, and then hopping the subway, headed to a nightclub in Chelsea. But at age 25, nine years ago, I was told I had multiple sclerosis, and I saw my freedoms slowly vanish.
In 2006, 25-year-old Jason DaSilva was on vacation at the beach with family when, suddenly, he fell down. He couldn’t get back up. His legs had stopped working; his disease could no longer be ignored. Just a few months earlier doctors had told him that he had multiple sclerosis, which could lead to loss of vision and muscle control, as well as a myriad of other complications. Jason tried exercise to help cope, but the problem only worsened.
People with disabilities often suffer a ‘civil death’ due to exclusion primarily related to physical barriers of the built environment. AXS Map is building a social movement around inclusion for people with physical disabilities. AXS Map is a crowd-sourced platform for mapping wheelchair accessibility of buildings and places, and sharing that information across a network.