Yelp makes it easy to find businesses that meet your accessibility needs

Using the review site Yelp is a great way to learn important details about a business, such as its sustainability, inclusiveness, and accessibility practices. Now, Yelp is adding new attributes and more artificial intelligence (AI) to make its offerings more holistic.

On Tuesday, Yelp announced it is partnering with Disability:IN, the American Association of People with Disabilities, Open to All and The Arc to launch new accessibility features ahead of Disability Pride Month in July. These features include new searchable accessibility attributes that make it easier for users to find businesses that meet their needs and eight new attributes tailored to mobility, hearing and vision accessibility requirements.

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The new attributes indicate whether a business has parking near the entrance, an ADA-compliant main entrance, ADA-compliant restrooms, no steps or stairs, at least one member staff proficient in ASL, closed captioning on televisions, braille menus available and QR code menus available.

The attributes can be found under the new Accessibility section in a business’s Information tab. To make it even easier to connect to the right company, users can search for attributes by entering queries like “QR code menus available” to find organizations that have adopted that attribute.

Business owners can add these attributes to their Yelp page for free by editing the Business Information section in their Yelp Business account. Users can also share attribute information through “Update Community” questions on Yelp business pages.

Yelp is also changing its app and website to make them more inclusive. For example, it added alternative AI-powered text descriptions for photos, allowing screen readers to provide better photo details to visually impaired Yelp users. This feature is now available on desktop and will be rolled out to other platforms later.

The company also introduced improved color contrast to make content more readable for visually impaired or color blind users and improved the overall screen reader experience.

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Finally, to help businesses access the things they need to create more inclusive spaces, Yelp has added a new Accessibility Resource Center with information, tools, tips and more.