If you’ve ever had to drag a suitcase along the street to get to the airport (remember those days?), push a child along in a stroller, or lug a bulky delivery cart, you would have noticed if a sidewalk either lacked a curb ramp or had one that didn’t function properly. For millions of North Americans who live with mobility issues or sight impairment, you can be sure that an improperly-functioning sidewalk would be an inconvenience at best, or a danger in the worst case scenario.
Curb ramps are critical to providing independence and equality to people with mobility and sight impairments. Thanks to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), who recently celebrated their 30th anniversary, regulations have been enforced across America to address the issue with too many unusable or unsafe curb ramps impeding the mobility for those who need them.
It’s not difficult to imagine the frustration and inconvenience of a wheelchair user having to navigate these sidewalks
State and nation-wide curb ramp upgrade initiatives require all public infrastructures to be wheelchair accessible and to adhere to individual state compliance standards. As a result of these regulations, many thousands of existing wheelchair ramps in the US have to be reconfigured each year. However, the process of developing the best possible design solution while ensuring compliance to design standards can be time-consuming and challenging depending on the existing site conditions. Taking into account the painstaking and time-consuming traditional method of this task, completion is expected to be decades in the making.
Recognizing the challenges civil engineers and cities faced to get the millions of curb ramps in North America up to state guidelines in a timely manner, Transoft spent two years developing a new software with input from US DOTs and engineering firms. The result was AQCESSRAMP, a curb ramp design tool that significantly reduces repetitive, time-consuming manual work by automating the process of designing compliant curb ramps. Allowing for easy recalculations and graphical feedback to accommodate design modifications viewed in 3D, this new technology will enable time and cost savings while expediting the design and implementation of safer, universally-accessible curb ramps.
AQCESSRAMP represents a major technological leap forward for streamlining curb ramp designs that are compliant with regional guidelines. By cutting back on the amount of trial and error in their design iterations, our customers can get to their final designs much quicker and accurately, reducing their costs in labour by at least 60% – a benefit for both the designer and their organization in these tough economic times. By revolutionizing the way curb ramps are currently designed, we aim to improve the lives of millions of pedestrians so that they can have peace-of-mind of being able to move around safely, independently and hassle-free.