Mapping Our Cities for All: A participatory baseline of business accessibility in Canada

Abstract Canada has committed to eliminating accessibility barriers by 2040, yet municipalities lack clear, comparable evidence on where building access breaks down. To address this gap, we set out to produce and test a participatory, city‐scale method to measure building accessibility of businesses. We report results from Mapping Our Cities for All, a disabled‐led assessment of public‐facing businesses in Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa, and selected small Alberta communities (n=13,804). To evaluate how well our sample reflects local business landscapes, we compared our results with Statistics Canada's Open Database of Businesses by dissemination area and used a Mann–Whitney U test; within the study cities, distributions did not differ, supporting local representativeness. We then profiled accessibility at the city level and identified clusters using hot spot analysis (Getis–Ord Gi*), Global Moran's I, and local indicators of spatial association (LISA) applied to perceived ratings (accessible, partially accessible, not accessible). Across sites, fewer than half of audited businesses were rated fully accessible, with statistically significant clustering of lower accessibility in dense commercial districts. By pairing community audits with standard spatial statistics, we provide a practical baseline for tracking progress toward a barrier‐free Canada.