About
AbleSpot lists places and what is actually there, criterion by criterion, with its source and its date. What follows explains why, and under which rules.
Why this site exists
This site was started by a parent, for a very ordinary reason: we rarely went out, for lack of ideas. Not for lack of wanting to. Wanting to show your child the world does not fade because the outing is complicated.
When disability is severe, looking for an outing is not looking for an outing. It is an investigation, every time: phoning, reaching someone who does not know, digging through photos, guessing. And often giving up, because the energy went into the preparation instead of the day itself.
A building described as accessible says almost nothing. It does not say where to change a ten-year-old, whether the child will have to be lifted out of the wheelchair, whether there is somewhere to withdraw to when it gets too much, whether you will park thirty metres away or three hundred. Those are the answers that decide an outing.
So AbleSpot is not a directory of compliant buildings. It is a list of places families have been to, and of what they found there, said precisely enough to decide before making the journey.
Why every criterion stands alone
A place described as accessible can have a ramp at the door and three steps before the toilets. Reducing that to a single tick box means sending someone on a wasted journey.
So each criterion stands on its own, with five possible answers: accessible, not accessible, partly, not applicable - or not recorded, as long as nobody knows.
A few criteria name an obstacle rather than a feature: a steep slope, narrow passages, a transfer out of the wheelchair. The five answers are the same, but they read yes and no, and “no” is the one a family hopes to find.
What you will never be asked
No diagnosis, no condition, no percentage. We talk about practical needs: a manual wheelchair, a powered wheelchair, a transfer that isn't possible, a need for quiet. Someone's health is none of this site's business.
Where the information comes from
From families passing through and from the venues themselves. Each entry carries its source and its date.
Information ages: a lift breaks down, building work starts, opening hours change. Anyone can confirm or correct what is written.
It is the community that publishes, not AbleSpot. The site checks nothing on site, does not guarantee what is written, and is not liable for an error on a page. What it does is spare you the blind search: when something is decisive for you, a transfer, a doorway, a toilet, a call to the venue remains the last word.
How the site runs
It is free, with no advertising and no subscription. It sells nothing and resells no data. An account can be deleted at any time; contributions remain, detached from their author.
The first entries are incomplete, and that is normal
The places you see today come from OpenStreetMap, the free map of the world, and from Muséofile, the register of the Musées de France: close to nine hundred towns and cities, in France and elsewhere in Europe. Nobody visited them for AbleSpot: they are starting points, not finished entries.
OpenStreetMap knows almost one thing only: whether a place can be used in a wheelchair, or not. An entry therefore often carries two or three answers out of forty-nine. Muséofile gives a name and an address and stops there: most of those entries carry no answer at all. Everything else says “not specified”, which is the truth rather than an oversight.
If you know one of these places, you can complete it right away: the accessibility criteria you fill in appear immediately, without waiting for review. And if the place you have in mind is not there yet, add it.