Two Southeast-based startups are joining forces to ensure those with disabilities are able to more easily navigate streets, parking lots, and all public places.
North Carolina-based Passport announced that their parking payment software will now be integrated into the iAccess Life app. iAccess, which was born in Atlanta, helps users with disabilities research, rate, and review places to ensure their next destination can accommodate their needs.
“First off, we are thrilled about this partnership and are looking forward to building this functionality into our app with support from the Passport Product team. In February of 2020 the Passport team identified us as a potential partner to work with to expand the reach of their great solution and they reached out to us to see if we would be interested in working together,” iAccess Life’s Chief Innovation Product Officer Sayeed Mehrjerdian told Hypepotamus.
The Passport and iAccess partnership will help more users feel confident navigating difficult parking situations.
“For folks who rely on a mobility aid such as a wheelchair, getting in and out of your vehicle is already a more time-consuming process. Imagine you arrive at your destination in the middle of a rainstorm, the last thing you want to do is have to trek to some dimly lit corner of a parking lot to find an inaccessible parking meter that is potentially placed on an elevated curb after taking the time to set up your wheelchair and to transfer from your vehicle to your mobility aide all while being rained on. Our goal with iAccess Life is to continuously seek out feature integrations like this partnership with Passport to make the lives of our users easier, as that is what will ultimately drive users to our platform and keep them using our app.”
“Access to parking is one of the biggest obstacles to independent living for 30 million Americans with disabilities that affect mobility,” explains Helen Sullivan, Director of the Accessible Parking Coalition, in a statement about the new partnership.
The partnership is not the only big development for the iAccess Life team recently. Mehrjerdian told Hypepotamus that even though COVID curbed traveling and the app saw some user drop off earlier in the year, the team used the time to build for the future.
“We have developed a training module geared toward service and hospitality-oriented businesses that teaches their employees how to give customers with disabilities the best level of service possible.”
“1 in 4 Americans have some form of disability and people with disabilities spend $645 billion dollars annually, this is not a market to overlook or take lightly. Hence our desire to better equip restaurants, hotels, airlines, rideshares and other service oriented companies with the knowledge of how to give customers with disabilities the best level of service possible so that they don’t ostracize this demographic from using their product or service.”
Businesses that are interested in this training can reach out at info@iaccess.life.