Accessibility is at the root of inclusion. Whether it’s being able to go to lunch with people at the office and know that you’ll have a chair that works for you, attend a networking happy hour and know that you’ll be safe and accommodated, attend the city council meeting and know that the room will be accessible, have access to a bathroom that is appropriate for you gender, or get your blood pressure taken with a properly-sized cuff at the doctor’s office.

We’re excited! We’ve reworked our search algorithms on Ample so that users can manually input the small portion of providers and businesses that do not come up in search.

From the Inbox: “I own a Bed and Breakfast and would be happy to make accommodations for fat people, but I don’t know what they would be… I want you to be comfortable and enjoy your stay. Help!”

We messed up. We, the white folks at Ample, thought we were being respectful by holding off on incorporating the review functionality for BIPOC inclusivity until we had better feedback from those communities. That functionality had been written, but omitted from Ample, after advisement from a POC whom [in retrospect] we tokenized. We also fell dramatically short of continued and thorough outreach into these communities when seeking dialogue and feedback. We let our allying become performative in our fear of messing up.

Ample is similar to other popular review sites, but it’s the first that rates doctors, services, and all types of establishments specifically on their accessibility and inclusiveness towards people in marginalized bodies (fat, trans, and disabled, for now). You can search for businesses to discover what others are saying and then rate and review establishments, both positively and negatively, on the job they’re doing.