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"Accessibility" - Google News - Saturday, April 6, 2019 at 9:18 AM
Ability App: 14-Year-Old Alex Knoll Is Creating Yelp for Accessible Spaces -
Inverse
Alex Knoll is nervous about starting high school in Coeurs d’Alene, Idaho, next
fall, but not only because of the harder assignments and new social scene. He’s
worried about managing his startup, which received $25,000 from Ellen Degeneres
while he was still in middle school.
Alex Knoll is the 14-year-old inventor of Ability
App<https://www.abilityapp.org>, a mobile app that, when it launches later this
year, will function like Yelp, but for people with disabilities. Ability App
will connect people with disabilities related to mobility, vision, hearing or
cognition with businesses that have the resources to accommodate them.
There’s really nothing out there like it.”
Knoll says he has dedicated the bulk of his free time for the past four years
working the app — his parents have homeschooled him to help him keep
development going. In 2017, he was a guest on The Ellen DeGeneres Show where
she presented him with a $25,000 check to keep up his work with the project.
“After I was on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, I received over 30,000 emails from
people talking about how this tool would change their lives,” Knoll tells
Inverse. “There were definitely some very emotional things that people have
said. They’ve said how life-changing this app would be for them, because
there’s really nothing out there like it.”
[alex knoll young innovators]<picture class="m-pic"><source
srcset="https://fsmedia.imgix.net/45/44/fc/57/7f8f/4974/838f/823339cd1cc0/knoll-on-the-ellen-degeneres-show-in-2017.jpeg?auto=format%2Ccompress&amp;w=375,
https://fsmedia.imgix.net/45/44/fc/57/7f8f/4974/838f/823339cd1cc0/knoll-on-the-ellen-degeneres-show-in-2017.jpeg?auto=format%2Ccompress&amp;dpr=2&amp;w=375
2x" class="-st-s" media="(max-width:559px)"><img class="m-img in -st-l"
srcset="https://fsmedia.imgix.net/45/44/fc/57/7f8f/4974/838f/823339cd1cc0/knoll-on-the-ellen-degeneres-show-in-2017.jpeg?auto=format%2Ccompress&amp;w=650,
https://fsmedia.imgix.net/45/44/fc/57/7f8f/4974/838f/823339cd1cc0/knoll-on-the-ellen-degeneres-show-in-2017.jpeg?auto=format%2Ccompress&amp;dpr=2&amp;w=650
2x"
src="https://fsmedia.imgix.net/assets/placeholder.png?auto=format%2Ccompress&amp;dpr=2";
alt="alex knoll young innovators "></picture>Knoll on 'The Ellen
DeGeneres Show' in 2017.
There are few cities out there that are truly accessible for all residents. In
New York, only
one-quarter<https://wheelchairtravel.org/new-york-city/public-transportation/>
of subway stops are wheelchair accessible. Due to a
loophole<https://mic.com/articles/153739/how-american-restaurants-fail-to-accommodate-blind-diners#.XeidLFvNB>
in the Americans with Disabilities Act, US restaurants don’t have to provide
Braille menus to blind diners as long as it is posted online. In 2016, the
United Nations
acknowledged<https://www.un.org/disabilities/documents/desa/good_practices_in_accessible_urban_development_october2016.pdf>
that the current lack of accessibility in cities around the world “presents a
major challenge.”
“I have a lot of friends with disabilities who have helped me get an overview,”
Knoll says. “They’ve helped me get finalized [on] specific features on the app.”
How Ability App Works
The basis for the app is simple in theory, but far more difficult in practice.
He envisions a pulldown menu that would allow a person to select their
particular disability, which would then let them sort through local businesses
that are rated on a scale of one to five stars on their accessibility for that
particular disability. That functionality, he says, has already taken rounds of
testing and years to perfect.
Thinking past his 2019 launch date, he’s already thinking even bigger: He wants
the app to feature a job board and reviews from users — a digital ecosystem
that goes beyond the widely embraced accessibility
maps<https://wheelmap.org/?locale=en-us> that have already drawn a lot of
attention to the inequities built into modern cities.
[ability app alex knoll]<picture class="m-pic"><source
srcset="https://fsmedia.imgix.net/53/4c/83/7a/a450/4086/94b4/00a44abfaf99/knolls-app-can-sort-businesses-according-to-several-different-types-of-disabilities.png?auto=format%2Ccompress&amp;w=375,
https://fsmedia.imgix.net/53/4c/83/7a/a450/4086/94b4/00a44abfaf99/knolls-app-can-sort-businesses-according-to-several-different-types-of-disabilities.png?auto=format%2Ccompress&amp;dpr=2&amp;w=375
2x" class="-st-s" media="(max-width:559px)"><img class="m-img in -st-l"
srcset="https://fsmedia.imgix.net/53/4c/83/7a/a450/4086/94b4/00a44abfaf99/knolls-app-can-sort-businesses-according-to-several-different-types-of-disabilities.png?auto=format%2Ccompress&amp;w=497,
https://fsmedia.imgix.net/53/4c/83/7a/a450/4086/94b4/00a44abfaf99/knolls-app-can-sort-businesses-according-to-several-different-types-of-disabilities.png?auto=format%2Ccompress&amp;dpr=2&amp;w=497
2x"
src="https://fsmedia.imgix.net/assets/placeholder.png?auto=format%2Ccompress&amp;dpr=2";
alt="ability app alex knoll "></picture>Knoll's app can sort
businesses according to several different types of disabilities
Knoll says he looks up to Apple CEO Tim Cook, whose company has made
accessibility a priority in its hardware, notably in the wheelchair-optimized
Apple Watch<https://www.apple.com/accessibility/watch/>.
“He’s been a hero of mine for a long time,” Knoll says of Cook. “He doesn’t
just care about business; he knows that it’s important to focus on the needs of
others in his products.”
Knoll says he devotes a few hours a day to answering emails from potential
users before starting on homeschool assignments. But he also likes riding his
bike, drawing, tennis and pickleball. This fall, he begins high school and
leaves the home-school/Ability App routine behind. That brings its own set of
challenges and opportunities.
“I’m hoping that this school will hopefully accept some of the things I’ll be
working on,” he says. “But I really want to get back to seeing kids my own age
and going to school.”
https://www.inverse.com/article/54622-alex-knoll-ability-app-young-innovators
David Goldfield
Assistive Technology Specialist
Feel free to visit my Web site
WWW.DavidGoldfield.info<http://WWW.DavidGoldfield.info>
