@JPinAR and I have come up with a second round of the sensory_friendly proposal following feedback in previous RFC and voting periods! We welcome comments on this revised proposal here or on the talk page:
Proposal:Sensory - OpenStreetMap Wiki
Please, cross post this announcement on the tagging mailing list on my behalf by sending an email to: tagging@openstreetmap.org.
This tag is very important to neurodivergent people, and as so i 100% approve it.
The revised tagging scheme strongly recalls the wheelchair=* tagging scheme. That’s a good move, since wheelchair=* is so well-established and well-supported. The proposal should mention this relationship so voters less familiar with wheelchair=* will know to compare and contrast the two situations.
The new table of specific accommodations makes the proposal much more concrete. Thanks for researching the various accommodations and sensory disorders. Since amenity=quiet_room came along for the ride and you acknowledge that a quiet room isn’t necessarily for sensory needs, the proposal could call out explicitly that sensory_friendly:accommodation=* is only valid when it’s intentionally offered as an accommodation. Otherwise, some of these qualities are often present by coincidence, such as dimmed_lighting at a cinema or fine dining restaurant or refueling_assistance at any gas station in New Jersey. The “Subjectivity” section sort of addresses this issue, but I think this is a good place to reinforce the message.
The section on conditional tagging could be simpler. by_appointment is a well-established condition, but upon_request and listed_events are novel as far as I can tell. I’d suggest using the existing "comment" syntax for these cases, which would enable mappers to relay more details about when the accommodations are provided.
It looks like the previous vote got removed in favor of the reworked proposal. Would you mind archiving that vote on a subpage or moving the reworked proposal to a new proposal page? (After all, the proposed key hasn’t been sensory=* for a while now.) That would make it easier for participants in the previous round to tell what changed and what didn’t.
A use case for ‘upon_request’ is I went to a coffee shop with a friend today, they have sensory sensitivity and the music was too loud. Upon request, the shop happily and promptly lowered the volume to accommodate our need.
Additionally, many people I know that have sensitivity to sensory items also have some form of anxiety around asking for accommodation. I think it would be useful to tag that a place is particularly upon request instead of relegating it to a comment. That way if a data consumer wanted to list or filter places by default or request it would be possible.
Events I am not sure if there’s a more always to capture but would be open to feedback to anyone hosting / participating in such events!
Voting is now open for second round of voting
A minor point that escaped my attention until just now: most of the proposal refers to sensory_friendly:accommodation=*, but there’s no section about that subkey, only one for sensory_friendly:need=* that seems to be for specifying the accommodation. Did the subkey get renamed at some point?
I noticed this today too after a reread following some time away from it. It should probably be accommodation as that section goes over things that are accommodating. I think the confusion came when describing why the accommodation is needed to give mappers an example.
As a side note, accommodation would also be more fitting in an overall context. I would like an accommodation or disability hub on the wiki one day with wheelchair, sensory, and other accommodations we can branch off into. Currently, accommodation=* is about a bed being present in a pub in the UK which is why I didn’t go for an overall accommodation:physical:*=*, accommodation:sensory:*=*, etc.
Long story short, it should match the info box, accommodation. Unsure process wise what that would do to the proposal now that voting is underway.
Thanks, that’s what I figured. My impression is that changing the heading doesn’t really change the substance of the proposal. But you could add a note and ping the current voters on the talk page to alert them, just in case.
Reposting this here!
Hello everyone! I really like this conversation. I am actually presenting on Mapping and Neurodiversity this Friday at the Open Street Map “State of the Map” Conference in Boston.
I wish I discovered this thread earlier. I would like to propose some of these ideas that have been discussed as solutions to help neurodivergent people identify sensory-safe spaces when using Open Street Map.
I am a fairly new user to OSM and don’t have a full understanding of all the Boolean values.
If possible, could someone provide a succinct summary of where you are at in the conversation and what I could possibly include in my presentation? I hope people see this - I caught it on Reddit after CHAT GPT alerted me to its presence.
I can highlight some of the possibilities and hopefully this can gain some traction.
Thank you so much! I can be reached at timothyfeller@proton.me
I really want to help neurodivergent people navigate the world better!
Let me know.
Best,
Tim F.
Arizona State University