Now that lockdown has shown us that improving accessibility of the world is possible, and as it has always been said, it benefits all of us, efforts in this matter are expected from governments and companies to achieve more inclusive and accessible cities.

Without doubts, this “accesibilization” has been possible thanks to technology, so this tool has to be taken in advantage. Cities continue growing to models of smart cities, where technology and built environment interact to improve citizens’ well-being. Obviously this technology could bring awesome improvements to many people with disabilities. For this new paradigm, a mix of technology, information and implication of people is necessary to ensure that this innovative and revolutionary systems will provide with solutions to all citizens´ needs. The problem is that these three branches are not evolving at the same time, technology innovations are much faster and not always taking into account if these are improving everybody’s lives or if these might provoke a barrier for someone.

Project SmartCities4All from G3ict is trying to raise leaders´ awareness, to make them realise that  accessibility is not only a long term strategy, but it is necessary to be taken into account as a fundamental feature in the construction of cities of the future. Accessibility should be considered as an essential criterion in the cities holistic vision, so synergies could be designed to be tackled efficiently. This lack of information is one of the biggest problems of accessibility, so collecting data of the current situation of accessibility in cities would be fundamental to face the situation. And once analysis stage has brought results, these would need to be considered to foster an action plan. Consideration of accessibility is essential in all the evolution stages to ensure that the cities we are creating will not leave anyone behind.