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Toyota launching restroom finder app with a difference
Toyota’s new app will find adapted restroom facilities and disabled parking spaces. – AFP/Relaxnews pic, May 19, 2015.The company is developing an app for its Toyota and Lexus models that is aimed at simplifying route planning for drivers and passengers with disabilities or special needs about to embark on a long car journey.
Due to roll out initially in Japan on Thursday, the new app is essentially a tool for finding rest room facilities on longer journeys.
However, rather than simply indicating whether or not a toilet is in the general vicinity, the app, which will work with Toyota and Lexus onboard telematics and infotainments systems, lets users search for everything from facilities with wide enough door openings for easy wheelchair access to those service stations with baby changing rooms.
Created in partnership with the Iseshima Barrier Free Tour Center, a not-for-profit organisation that promotes personal "barrier-free" standards for people with special needs, the app will get its official debut at Welfare 2015, a health and welfare exhibition taking place this week in Nagoya, Japan.
When it goes live, the app will initially offer in-depth information on three prefectures in the Tokai region (Aichi, Gifu and Mie) of Japan. But even with such a limited geographical range, that still amounts to detailed information on 191 facilities, 228 adapted restrooms plus basic information concerning a further 1,837 convenience stores that have toilets.
Users will be able to find out how many steps there are into a building, whether the front door is automatic or manual, if a facility has a disabled parking space, its opening hours and detailed maps of the building's layout.
Highlighting Toyota's obsession with leveraging technology for truly personal mobility, searches can be tailored to cover very specific needs, such as whether a parking space offers shelter and even the shape and position of hand rails, and these criteria can be saved so that every future search automatically incorporates them.
And because the app is designed to work with a Toyota or Lexus onboard navigation system, once suitable facilities have been identified, users can opt to integrate a trip to those facilities into the journey or to make them the ultimate destination. – AFP/Relaxnews, May 19, 2015.
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