This New App Invites People to Rate Businesses Based on Their Size Inclusivity
Every Body celebrates inclusivity and the representation of human beings in every shape and form.
Talk to any plus-size person about entering new spaces and you’ll likely hear anxiety. The reason for this: Many spaces just aren’t made to accommodate larger bodies. While it’s been well-documented online that some airlines have been asking fat passengers to buy two seats to accommodate them in-flight, airplanes are not the only places where fat bodies have been deemed unruly.
From concert arenas to coffee shops to theme parks, many fat folks have to deal with the constant anxiety of what may happen if they turn up to a brand-new business and find that their body cannot be accommodated. This is why Rebecca Alexander created a brand new app called Allgo that is challenging businesses to become more fat-friendly.
For years, Alexander heard other fat people, like herself, share the sentiment “As I got bigger, my world got smaller,” and she related in a lot of ways. In an interview with Brit + Co, Alexandra explains, “Whenever I would get invited somewhere new, I would spend hours scrolling through images online to determine whether or not the chairs of the restaurant had arms. I didn’t know if others felt the same.” They did.
The Allgo app, which is currently in pre-beta, plans to operate kind of like a Yelp for plus-size individuals. Profiles will be set up for businesses and will feature information like address, hours, social media and more. But more importantly, the app will call on its user base to submit their own subjective reviews of spaces that will rate factors like comfort and size of seating options, plus how fat-friendly the business is to their patrons.
According to Alexander, market research shows that 61 percent of fat people experience anxiety often when having to enter new spaces.
“By having access to this relevant information from other fat people, we’re hoping to reduce this anxiety one feels,” she says, and notes that it would be great for business owners to hear directly from their very own customers on the accessibility of their spaces.
Right now, Alexander and her team are looking for an injection of funding to help fast-track the development of Allgo and push it from pre-beta to beta. Until then, Alexander is asking interested users to sign up via the website and to share their photos of inclusively-designed (or otherwise) spaces on social media with the hashtags #sizeinclusivity or #canweallgo.
Would this app be helpful to you or someone you know? Tell us @britandco.