GIS for ADA Compliance: Advancing Transportation Accessibility

Bill Singleton, Vice President at Ecopia AI (Ecopia), recently moderated a webinar with experts from Alta Planning + Design, HDR, MSA Professional Services, Bad Elf, and DeepWalk Research to discuss GIS strategies for improving accessibility in transportation networks. Specifically, the conversation focused on issues and available GIS strategies to enhance compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This blog highlights key points from their insightful discussion. A recording of the webinar is available below.

Leveraging GIS across all phases of ADA compliance

The webinar kicks off with a case study presented by Jeff Powell from MSA Professional Services, a Midwest-based municipal engineering firm. Jeff shares that in 2019, the city of Janesville, Wisconsin partnered with MSA to enhance Public Right-of-Way Accessibility Guideline (PROWAG) compliance. Jeff highlights that GIS played an important role throughout the project from planning and data capture to reporting. 

Jeff shares that the first phase of the project focused on verifying and mapping essential assets in ArcGIS Online. This included ensuring that key elements such as public facilities, schools, and parks were accurately represented in the system. Next, his team established a prioritization strategy for auditing curb ramps, sidewalks, transit stops, transportation crossings, and other elements. They identified priority areas and performed intersection analyses of where audits would be held.

Jeff then introduces Phase 2 of the project, explaining that while there are various methods for capturing data accurately at scale—which will be discussed further in the webinar—the city used existing technology and trained staff to conduct inspections, employing mobile data collection with tablets to measure assets and evaluate ADA compliance. To streamline the process, MSA implemented a GIS automation that assigned compliance grades from 1 to 3 to help prioritize areas based on project likelihood. Given the large volume of inspections required and the city’s limited resources, to monitor progress, all data was fed into an ArcGIS dashboard, providing real-time updates and preliminary compliance grading. This framework allowed the city to maintain a clear picture of ADA compliance and update it as they completed projects and inventories. Additionally, they developed a transition plan to integrate detailed ADA data into their project planning process using GIS, ensuring that ongoing work was effectively categorized, tracked, and maintained in the system.

The importance of the ADA Act in enhancing community accessibility 

Next, Nikolas Smilovsky, Geospatial Solutions Director at Bad Elf, discusses the crucial role of ADA transition plans and advanced mapping technologies for enhancing community accessibility. He begins by highlighting how important the ADA Act is for improving accessibility and fostering safer, more equitable communities. He notes that in the US, 57 million people—approximately 19% of the population—live with disabilities. Compliance with the ADA Act involves a detailed examination of various elements such as sidewalks, ramp angles, and walking surface conditions. He explains that by mapping and analyzing these components throughout the city, communities can ensure everyone can navigate public spaces safely and without risk of injury. By adhering to ADA standards, municipalities support disadvantaged groups and provide equal access to public services, facilities, and opportunities. Moreover, meeting these standards helps avoid financial repercussions or fines and demonstrates a commitment to investing in a community where people want to live. 

Nikolas explains that Bad Elf specializes in Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) and highlights that the ADA Act has specific requirements for ramp slopes to ensure accessibility and safety for individuals with disabilities. He notes that highly accurate GPS systems can help determine slopes to support ADA compliance. For example, he describes a customer who attached a Bad Elf GPS to an e-bike and rode up and down community slopes to capture precise measurements, which helped identify areas for improvement and ensured compliance with ADA specifications.

Nikolas discusses how technological advancements are revolutionizing ADA compliance by scaling data collection across the city. New innovations, like artificial intelligence (AI), enable the efficient gathering of large amounts of data in a short period and are improving data analysis and processing. 

Simplifying ADA compliance 

In the next portion of the webinar, Brandon Yates, Founder and CEO of DeepWalk Research, takes the stage. He explains that DeepWalk's goal is to simplify ADA compliance for Departments of Transportation (DOTs), Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs), universities, and their consultants. He explains that, according to ADA requirements, municipalities with more than 50 employees are required to do a self-evaluation and a proactive assessment of their sidewalk systems and develop a plan to address issues found in the evaluation. He explains that this task has been challenging for municipalities across the country. For instance, fewer than 11% of communities in Illinois have a recent self-evaluation or transition plan, which in some cases has led to financial repercussions.

Brandon shares that self-evaluations have been a massive undertaking due to the time-consuming and labor-intensive nature of manual assessments. To address this challenge, Deep Walk developed a scanning software that utilizes the LiDAR sensors on the latest iPhones. Brandon explains that with Deep Walk's app, municipalities can scan sidewalks, assess them against key PROWAG guidelines, and generate reports and deliverables, simplifying the creation of transition plans. 

Implementing Section 508 of the ADA Act

The next presenter is Esther Bowlin, GIS Analyst at HDR, an architecture, engineering, and construction firm. Esther discusses ADA compliance in the digital space, focusing on Section 508 of the ADA Act. Section 508 mandates equal access in digital environments, emphasizing accessibility for individuals with visual impairments, including color blindness (CBD) and low vision. While this requirement only applies to federal projects, some states like Colorado have adopted the order. 

Esther explains that, in the context of an ADA project, the ‘digital environment’ would encompass all digital deliverables and communications, including emails, webpages, digital maps, and reports. Esther provides an overview of the accessibility requirements and shares practical examples and best practices to effectively implement Section 508 compliance in GIS, focusing on key design principles like color and contrast. 

Ensuring that text contrasts sufficiently with its background is crucial for individuals with low vision or visual impairments. Esther recommends using a resource called WebAIM to verify if the color contrast in a project meets accessibility standards. Esther also addresses font rotation, noting that individuals with low vision may struggle to read text that is rotated more than 90 degrees. Additionally, she points out that text overlap can make content difficult to read and discern and shares advice to avoid these issues when creating maps.

Esther shares resources for creating compliant color ramps in digital maps. For example, ColorBrewer 2.0 is a useful tool that provides color ramp suggestions and includes filters for colorblind accessibility. Esther concludes by emphasizing the importance of designing with accessibility in mind, even when it is not mandated, to ensure that maps are understandable and usable by everyone.

Supporting accessible transportation networks in Mt. Shasta with Alta

In the concluding segment of the webinar, David Wasserman from Alta Planning + Design, a multidisciplinary firm dedicated to creating sustainable communities across the US and Canada, explores pedestrian planning beyond ADA compliance. 

David highlights that transportation inventory efforts are crucial not only for ensuring ADA compliance but also for uncovering broader opportunities to enhance pedestrian planning. He explains that detailed geospatial data from Ecopia provides a comprehensive, accurate, and up-to-date view of the built environment, which is invaluable for managing assets and guiding planning. This data detailed perspective on transportation infrastructure can improve network quality and connectivity, support safety initiatives like Vision Zero, aid in tree canopy expansion, enhance multimodal planning, and more.

High-precision geospatial data is essential for ADA compliance and other transportation planning initiatives as it provides detailed insights into transportation networks and infrastructure. For example, ADA standards outline specific requirements for various elements of transportation networks, including sidewalk width, bus shelters, curb ramps, and more. Gathering the detailed data necessary to evaluate ADA compliance—such as the precise width of sidewalks across an entire network—can be quite challenging. Traditional methods of creating these inventories, such as on-site evaluations or manual digitization from aerial imagery, are time-consuming and expensive for civil engineering firms and municipalities. Fortunately, AI is transforming this process. At Ecopia, our AI-powered technology ingests imagery to extract high-precision transportation features at scale, with the accuracy of a trained GIS professional.

David illustrates this with a case study, where Alta partnered with Ecopia to acquire high-precision geospatial data in the Mt. Shasta region. In just three days, Ecopia’s AI-based mapping systems created a detailed inventory of sidewalks and crosswalks in Mt. Shasta. David explains that Alta used this data, along with roadbed widths and speed limits, to assess traffic stress levels and pedestrian connectivity in the area. 

David explains that in Modesto, California, Alta used similar sidewalk and crosswalk data to assess how existing infrastructure impacted safety near schools. Their analysis revealed that two-thirds of severe or fatal pedestrian collisions occurred where crosswalks were spaced more than 800 feet apart. This example demonstrates how integrating ADA-related datasets into a broader context can uncover valuable insights that might otherwise be missed.

David also highlights the importance of thermal comfort for pedestrians in a warming world. He cites a Sacramento project where tree canopy inventories, although not directly tied to ADA efforts, help identify areas for new tree plantings. This data can improve pedestrian comfort by increasing shade and can be integrated with active transportation planning to create more comfortable and walkable urban environments.

Advancing ADA compliance with AI-powered geospatial data 

ADA compliance is fundamental to building inclusive communities that support everyone. AI-powered geospatial data is revolutionizing transportation planning providing comprehensive, accurate, and up-to-date geospatial data that MPOs, DOTs, and civil engineering firms can use to identify and address accessibility issues. By leveraging a detailed understanding of infrastructure, decision-makers can make significant strides in enhancing accessibility, equity, and safety in transportation networks.

For a closer look at the high-precision data that Ecopia creates, we invite you to explore this demo from a project we did to help improve transportation accessibility, safety, and sustainability in San Bernardino. If you’re interested in learning more about how Ecopia’s AI-powered geospatial data can support your transportation planning projects, don't hesitate to get in touch.