Not quite knowing what to expect, I signed up to do a “mapping exercise” of public spaces in Burwood, Sydney. The event was organised by the Physical Disability Council of NSW in conjunction with WheelEasy. While standard online resources like Google Maps can help people with a physical disability navigate, WheelEasy takes it a step further by crowd-sourcing information, empowering people with disabilities to update the maps themselves.
The platform was founded by Max Burt OAM, a prominent Australian disability advocate, entrepreneur, and the driving force behind the WheelEasy charity and web application. Max’s work focuses on improving accessibility information and shifting societal attitudes toward disability—efforts that earned him the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in the 2025 Australia Day Honours List.
Before his advocacy work, Max had a fast-paced, highly successful career in the United Kingdom as an advertising executive. In late 1999, his life changed drastically when his car was hit side-on by an on-call fire engine. The collision left him with severe head injuries, partial paralysis on his left side, and significant speech, sight, and hearing impairments. Becoming a permanent wheelchair user meant completely rebuilding his life from scratch.
Driven by the sheer frustration of not knowing which venues he could easily access, Max created the WheelEasy Access Information web app. Often described as a “TripAdvisor for accessibility,” the mobile-friendly web app provides crowd-sourced information, reviews, and photos of accessible locations—ranging from cafes and cinemas to parks and beaches. The ultimate goal is to allow people with mobility needs, the elderly, and parents with prams to enjoy spontaneity when going out.
For our mapping day, a group of wheelchair users and people with limited mobility set out to review various locations around Burwood, including the train station, the library, the shopping centre, the cinema, and local parks. My specific task was to review two small reserves featuring children’s playground equipment. I was accompanied by Jose, a Master of Social Work student originally from Bangladesh who is currently studying here, and doing an internship with WheelEasy.
My Reviews
It was an incredible experience that forced me to see things from a perspective I might not have noticed before I became an amputee almost three years ago. I also had the chance to speak briefly on video during the day, which I look forward to featuring in an upcoming episode of my podcast.
INTERVIEW WITH MAX BURT OAM
When Max Burt moved to a beachside area north of Sydney in 2011, he discovered a glaring gap in accessibility information. It took him three years to realise the local beach had a mat rolled out for wheelchair access. “And that obviously wasn’t because it didn’t… It’s because it wasn’t promoted in any way whatsoever,” Burt explains. “There was no information.” After conducting an online survey, he found that “over nine in ten” wheelchair users faced similar issues finding reliable details. “It’s not rocket science,” he notes, “and information is really not that hard to gather together if you know what you’re looking for.”
Before WheelEasy, people with mobility needs struggled to find answers. “They normally don’t,” Burt says regarding where people find information. When they look at individual company websites, the details are often “hidden away on the back pages,” sometimes incorrect, incomplete, and there is “hardly ever any use of photos.”
This sparked Burt’s vision for WheelEasy “to become a forum where people… with needs would [share] information that makes a real difference in the quality of their lives.” By crowdsourcing real experiences, the platform provides accurate, community-driven data.
The initiative has grown significantly. “We’ve now done over three and a half thousand” sites in Sydney, Burt shares, adding that they are “nudging nine hundred in Canberra” and expanding into Melbourne, Newcastle, and the Central Coast. “The idea is to one day cover all of Australia.” Following a successful day in Burwood, Burt emphasizes that the goal is not just mapping locations, but to “get them excited about the idea so that they tell other people they know who might need something similar.”
All it took for me to begin to understands the issues was wheeling a shopping jeep, such as a path coming to a gutter in shopping centre car park. “Well, this is just not right.”
Totally Andrew!!