Pitney
Bowes (NYSE:PBI) today announced that it has developed a mobile
application to help disabled people find, create and share information
about accessible restaurants, shops and services with €200,000 in funding
from the Swedish Post
and Telecom Authority (PTS), a government agency that oversees
postal and telecommunications services for the country.
People with disabilities have long been challenged to find accessible
locations that meet their daily needs. The “Öppen Handel” mobile
application makes it quick and easy to find accessible locations, by
utilizing crowdsourced data to locate a list of disability-friendly
stores, restaurants and cafes. Users can easily upload geotagged photos
of specific places and search for nearby venues on a map to evaluate
their accessibility.
The solution ensures continual accessibility improvements by
incorporating improvement suggestions (via a checklist) and enabling
users to report inaccurate data. The application is compatible with both
Android and iOS, and leverages Pitney Bowes’ Spectrum
Location Intelligence platform to associate geocoded data with precise
physical locations and provides a rich user experience.
PTS chose to fund this particular project because of Pitney Bowes’
proposed crowdsourcing approach and the potential it saw for the app to
dramatically improve the lives of people with disabilities. The
application, called “Öppen Handel” (Open Trade), was also selected
because of the precision of Pitney Bowes’ geocoding technology in its
Spectrum platform and its proven capabilities to integrate and manage
large datasets with enterprise stability and performance.
“PTS has a mandate to provide community services to all of Sweden’s
residents, including people with disabilities,” said Anders Franzén,
Senior Innovation Officer, PTS. “Governments around the world are
looking to leverage crowdsourcing and mobile applications to improve the
lives of their citizens. Given our desire to improve services for the
disabled, we looked to Pitney Bowes to create a mobile app that could
combine location information with collaboration and sharing
capabilities.”
“Since we first created the basic platform behind Öppen Handel,
PTS has shown interest in using the underlying technologies to integrate
data from other sources and expand the usefulness of the app,” added
Kyrre Garseth, CES Sales Director, Continental Europe, Pitney Bowes
Software. “One interesting potential example is for Swedish banks, where
many rural bank branches have been closed. There are still places
outside of urban areas that handle banking transactions, such as grocery
stores, but they can be difficult to find. Öppen Handel makes it
possible to help people find where they can bank or park. PTS is truly a
forward-looking government agency and we are delighted to have the
chance to work with them to develop further applications like these.”
The latest version of the mobile app includes capabilities such as
social media sharing, the ability to show and hide categories of places,
integration with cloud services to store photos and faster searches for
places and map locations.
To download the app on Google Play, please visit: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pb.oppenhandel
To download the app from iTunes (AppStore), please visit: https://itunes.apple.com/se/app/oppen-handel/id669909043
Connect with Pitney
Bowes on LinkedIn.
About Pitney Bowes
Pitney Bowes provides technology solutions for small,
mid-size and large firms that help them connect with customers to build
loyalty and grow revenue. Many of the company’s solutions are delivered
on open platforms to best organize, analyze and apply both public and
proprietary data to two-way customer communications. Pitney Bowes
includes direct mail, transactional mail and call center communications
in its solution mix along with digital channel messaging for the Web,
email and mobile applications. Pitney Bowes: Every connection is a new
opportunity™. www.pb.com.
About the Swedish Post and Telecom Authority
http://www.pts.se/en-GB/
http://www.pts.se/innovation
Keywords: Pitney Bowes, Post and Telecom Authority, PTS, Sweden,
Innovation, Location Intelligence, Geocoding, Data Management, Software,
Disabled, Accessibility, Spectrum, Öppen Handel, Mobile App
Copyright Business Wire 2014