Princeton’s New Mobile App Can Help You Navigate Campus

When reuners arrive on campus this year, they can use a mobile app that has been updated to help them navigate campus quickly and in an accessible manner.

The recently revamped interactive wayfinding app, “Princeton Campus Map,” for iOS and Android devices, which launched in 2023, helps users map routes (and accessible routes) around campus. During the academic year, the map has helped students navigate around construction detours, and it has also been updated to integrate AccessAble guides that can be viewed through the app or on the AccessAble website. These guides provide users with images of the building’s various entrances and descriptions that note everything from the number of steps and dimensions of any doors, ramps, and elevators, to the level of background noise and the coloring of doors and floors, and much more.

“What it does is not say, ‘Oh, this is inaccessible and this is accessible’ — you get to decide how you can go,” says Asha Nambiar, director of accessibility and disability services. “It’s actually quite life-changing.”

While the Reunions tents and fencing around the tents are not included in the “Campus Map,” there will be signs around the tents to help situate attendees. Since it launched, the map has been updated frequently to note changes due to construction on campus and anecdotal feedback from users.

“There’s a feedback loop, so it’ll be interesting to see what kind of feedback we get that helps us constantly improve the product,” says Karen Fanning, director of Facilities communications.

The other big accessibility upgrade at Reunions this year will be the inclusion of wheelchair-accessible golf carts in the fleet roving around campus. Alumni will also be able to request to rent a golf cart for the weekend to get around campus, though there are a limited number of golf carts available for personal rentals.

Although it’s too late at this point to request accessibility accommodations, in the future, alumni should make requests as early as possible — and no later than two weeks ahead of time — through the accessibility page on the Reunions website. While Nambiar noted that housing accommodations, sign language interpreters, personal golf cart rentals, and more can be arranged, various offices on campus may need to work together to address each request and therefore need time to coordinate.

Additional accessibility improvements have continued to be discussed in the months leading up to Reunions — and will continue throughout Reunions weekend. Devin Livi, director of campus grounds, says his team is on hand throughout the festivities to ensure the continued accessibility of each site, and he encourages attendees to report any accessibility issues they experience on campus.

“We always have to run around and run back to look at sites multiple times because it is just so many moving parts,” Livi says. “Our best laid plans don’t always work the best because somebody might come through and change it, or somebody might move something, but I think we’ve really done a lot. ... There’s much more focus on [accessibility] and there’s a lot more awareness of these needs than there used to be.”

Once Reunions weekend is over, conversations will pick right back up again as various offices on campus receive feedback and try to improve for next year. “We’re still working on it,” Nambiar says. “We can always work on it, right? We are never going to sit back and say, ‘Oh this is it, we’re done.’”

Go online to https://accessibility.princeton.edu/campus to access the interactive map app.