Single mother of three children and tech entrepreneur, Stéphanie Gateau has many difficulties. “In fact, I have multiple disabilities, I am deaf, so I read lips and I have a neurodegenerative disease which means I am regularly in a wheelchair. Everything is very complicated.” For example, when the 55-year-old mother travels near Gare Saint-Jean in Bordeaux, an accessible and yet…
“You have to know that there are lots of obstacles, what we call travel break points. They can be gates, works, cobblestones which are just unbearable. There will always be cars parked incorrectly. on the sidewalk. Gravel is stupid, but it stops a chair from moving forward.”
A collaborative tool to find an alternative route
To avoid these obstacles, Stéphanie Gateau and her son, a daily helper, imagined Handiroad. Currently under development, the application is inspired by geolocation software for motorists and offers real-time mapping whose principle is simple: the user, whether valid or not, registers and reports obstacles .
“It’s a mobile application that uses real-time geolocation to identify risk areas on a route. There you have a trash can, there you have a car, there you have construction blocking, take this path that is more secure“, explains Clément Blanchi, project coordinator Handiroad since its creation in 2018.
“In fact, to summarize symbolically, the objective is to be the equivalent of a Waze for people with disabilities who have difficulty getting around. Instead of having radars, police or an accident Well, we point out all the obstacles around us.“, adds Stéphanie Gateau.
An app rather than waiting for accessibility standards to be met
“It takes too long to bring everything up to standard, it’s much too expensive. And the famous travel disruptions or obstacles such as a construction site, narrow sidewalks, particularly in Bordeaux, etc., there will always be some“, believes the Bordeaux entrepreneur.
“The idea was to think about how new technologies can help improve everyday life. And we believe that solidarity can profoundly change the world, hopes Stéphanie Gateau. In Bordeaux, for example, we had the entire skateboarding community who told us – we know all the sidewalks so we can also participate on this app.”
The Handiroad project relies on a community, “what we call guardian angels“They are good Samaritans, often helpers, quite simply citizens, who point out obstacles and make themselves available in the event of an alert. “80% of women with disabilities are victims of violence on a daily basis, It’s an atrocious number.“, recalls Stéphanie Gateau. After having herself suffered several serious attacks during her life, the mother recently launched #MetooHandicap to free the voices of other victims.
In search of partnerships, the Bordeaux entrepreneur is launching today a call to communities and announces a crowdfunding campaign to create a new version of the Handiroad application, with a universal design, to be accessible to all.
In the meantime, Stéphanie Gateau will be present at the Viva Tech show in Paris, after being selected as a Development Favorite by the La Poste group. A new award after the 17 awards already gleaned since 2018. “Out of 114,000 inclusion projects worldwide, Handiroad came second, just behind a Microsoft project!”
