Inclusive Digital Planning – Co-designing a collaborative mapping tool to support the planning of accessible public space for all

Digital planning is loaded with the expectation to make planning more inclusive. However, digital tools currently used in spatial planning processes to facilitate communication and participation of stakeholders often exclude people with disabilities through their design. Consequently, the research question of this study is how to design digital tools to support inclusive participation in the planning and design of public spaces to make them accessible for all. To answer this question, this research aimed to co-design an inclusive collaborative mapping tool with people with disabilities to enhance their participation in the planning and design of accessible public spaces. Developed in collaboration with eight people with various disabilities from the city of Zwolle in the Netherlands, the open-source mapping tool allows the in-situ registration of accessibility issues and supports collaborative decision-making workshops. The co-design process served to identify barriers and obstacles to the accessibility of public spaces in the city as well as user requirements for the inclusive design of the collaborative mapping tool. The tool was tested and evaluated in a collaborative mapping session with people with disabilities and municipal planners from the case study city. Our findings show that the design of inclusive digital planning tools is not limited to software features but also relates to hardware functionalities and the environment in which a tool is used. Taking the lessons learned from the co-design process, we argue that digital, physical, social and procedural accessibility are key to achieving inclusive digital planning.