Paper short abstract:

This communication focuses on the representations of accessibility embodied in the prototypes conceived by the participants of a digital innovation contest organized by a French railway company and the production of the informational infrastructure required for such services.

Paper long abstract:

Besides investing in infrastructures and personnel training, Transilien, the French rail subsidiary company for the region Ile-de-France (where the city of Paris is located), focused in 2013 its « open data and innovation program » on the subject of accessibility for the disabled. To do so, the company decided to organized a hackathon, an innovation contest, in order to get developers and disabled people conceiving prototypes of digital services aiming at « improving accessibility for everyone ».

This way of dealing with accessibility is surprising regarding classical methods, usually focusing on physical equipments and spatial organisation. Differently, Transilien aims at addressing accessibility with information and communication technologies: software, smartphone, open data etc. This communication focuses on the representations of accessibility for persons with reduced mobility embodied in the prototypes conceived by Transilien hackathon's participants. What does data driven innovation to representations of an accessible space ?

Based on an ethnographic observation, I suggest that the digital approach of accessibility relies on smartphone-mediated social interactions and fosters collective effort towards the development of an informational infrastructure. A particular attention will be given to the partnership between Transilien and the OpenStreetMap community, which aims at providing the central piece of the informational infrastructure : the cartographic database. I will argue that this cartographic work challenges the classic, physical approach of accessibility and replaces it by another ideal, in which the defaults of urban space would be conjured by real-time updated data.