Accessible Atlanta,mapped by the people who live it.
Ableway launches in Atlanta. Before that, we're doing something specific here: verifying the places this city's disabled residents actually move through — block by block, community-reviewed, and honest about what's not known yet. The map starts thin. That's the point.
Know before you go
What's actually accessible here
A few Atlanta institutions genuinely lead on access — the ones below document it well. These are useful starting points, not a substitute for checking before you go:
MARTA is rail-accessible system-wide — elevators at every station, level boarding, wide fare gates — and its Vertical Transportation Rehabilitation Program is modernizing all 111 elevators and 116 escalators across the 38 stations. That's the good news. The honest part: outages still happen, and a broken elevator reroutes your whole morning. You can subscribe to real-time elevator and escalator outage alerts — and that's exactly the kind of live, time-sensitive barrier Ableway surfaces on the map so you learn it before you're standing at a dead elevator, not after.
Atlanta · launch city65,000sidewalk ways · 17% mapped
Now arriving · launch city
The map starts thin. That's the point.
Roughly 65,000 sidewalk ways in our launch region — only about 17% carry any surface data today. The doors open block by block, verified by the people who roll through them. We counted first.
Local disabled advocates name the same gaps again and again: uneven sidewalks and missing curb cuts outside the tourist core, MARTA elevator outages that demand last-minute reroutes, an accessible-taxi fleet that must be booked hours ahead, and e-scooters parked across ramps and entrances. These aren't hypotheticals — they're the everyday map. Mapping them is how they stop being invisible.
Why Atlanta, why now
A city already on the record
The gaps above aren't rumors — they're documented, litigated, and partially funded. The public record reads like a case for a better map:
2012
A city ADA audit finds Atlanta's sidewalk infrastructure deteriorated. Little changes.
2018
Three wheelchair users sue the city in federal court: broken, uneven, and blocked sidewalks; curb ramps missing or unusable at intersections. The suit seeks class status. AJC
2023
A $1.6M settlement and consent decree: 25 years of committed sidewalk and curb-ramp repair, oversight from the city's ADA coordinator and an independent disability access evaluator. AJC
2024
The city council approves $120M in downtown bonds ahead of World Cup matches — with roughly $20M for sidewalks. Advocates, including New Disabled South, push for the same investment citywide, not just where visitors walk. AJC
Atlanta is already paying to fix the physical layer. Ableway is building the missing one: live, community-verified knowledge of what actually works, block by block, maintained by the people who use it. That's why we're starting here.
The community
Organizations already doing the work
Ableway is one voice in a community that's been at this for decades. These are some of the people making Atlanta move:
The questions people actually type into a search bar, answered with the same facts cited above — no new numbers, no spin.
Is Atlanta wheelchair accessible?
Honestly: it's mixed. Some institutions are genuinely excellent — the venues above document their access in detail, and MARTA's rail system is accessible system-wide. But the city's own record tells the other story: a 2012 ADA audit found deteriorated sidewalks, a federal lawsuit over broken and missing curb ramps led to a $1.6M settlement with 25 years of committed repair work, and open map data still can't tell you what most of the city's ~65,000 sidewalk blocks feel like under wheels.
Which Atlanta transit is wheelchair accessible?
MARTA rail is accessible system-wide: elevators at every station, level boarding, and wide fare gates across all 38 stations. Its Vertical Transportation Rehabilitation Program is modernizing all 111 elevators and 116 escalators — but outages still happen, and a dead elevator reroutes your whole morning. Check MARTA's real-time elevator and escalator outage alerts before you ride; surfacing those alerts is exactly the kind of live data Ableway puts on the map.
How can I check if a place in Atlanta is accessible before visiting?
Today, the reliable workarounds are manual: check the venue's own accessibility page (the institutions above all publish one), subscribe to MARTA's outage alerts, and call ahead — the field notes on this site cover exactly why that call is both essential and unreliable. Ableway is building the map that replaces the phone call: community-verified access data for Atlanta, block by block. It hasn't launched yet — the waitlist is how you get in first.
What is Ableway doing about Atlanta's accessibility data?
We counted the gap first: in our launch region, roughly 65,000 sidewalk ways — only about 17% have a surface tag, and just 61 elevators are tagged metro-wide. So phase one isn't routing; it's the reporting flywheel that fills the map in, one verified place at a time. The roadmap and methodology pages show exactly how that coverage grows.
Help us map Atlanta first.
The map is built by the people who live here. If you're in metro Atlanta, the fastest way to make this real is to be one of the first to verify the places you already know — and the waitlist is how we know you're here.
