Built to be used by everyone who needs to find their way

Getting around the app

• Keyboard. Everything can be reached with Tab and activated with Enter or Space. Press / to start a search, use the arrow keys to move through results and Enter to choose one, and Escape to close any panel. Keyboard focus is always visible.
• Screen readers. Search, the places list, the share sheet and the mapping tools are announced as dialogs with a name and a heading. While you are being guided, each new instruction is announced as you reach it, along with the distance to the next turn.
• Spoken directions. While navigating, switch on Spoken directions and each step is read aloud using your device’s own voice. Your phone also gives a short buzz at each turn and a longer one on arrival, where it supports vibration.
• Zoom and text size. Page zoom is never disabled. Pinching on the map zooms the map; pinching elsewhere zooms the page.
• Motion. If your device asks for reduced motion, the pulsing position dot, the moving route dashes and the panel animations are switched off.
• Colour. Colour is never the only carrier of meaning: the floor you are on, your destination and the type of a place are also given in text.

Routes that avoid stairs

Routes are step-free by default: a change of floor goes by lift unless you choose otherwise, and where a faster route would use stairs the app offers both and says which is which. A shared link or printed poster can ask for the step-free route on the reader’s behalf.

What the map cannot yet do

• The map itself is a picture. Everything it shows is also available as text — the search list, the places near you, the step-by-step directions — but the drawn floor plan is not described.
• Indoor positioning uses your phone’s sensors and cannot be exact. The app shows how confident it is and asks you to scan a poster to fix your position when it is unsure.
• Some hospitals are mapped from the trust’s published site map rather than a survey of the building. Those are marked, and the app says when a route is a direction to follow rather than a corridor-by-corridor path.

Telling us about a problem

If something in Findway does not work with the way you use your device, tell us through the form on the Support page and choose Accessibility. Say what you were trying to do, which device and assistive technology you were using, and what happened instead; that is enough to reproduce most problems.