Autism Friendly Spaces

01 / THE CHALLENGE

Making Malta easier to navigate for autistic people

For autistic people and their families, an ordinary outing involves questions most venues never think to answer. Prisms Malta, an autism NGO, wanted a platform with two jobs: help families find genuinely autism-friendly shops, services and venues — and train those businesses to become autism-friendly in the first place.

A platform about accessibility has to be accessible itself, and it had to reach people where they are: on the web and on their phones.

02 / THE SOLUTION

A map, a school and an app in one platform

The heart of the platform is a Google Maps directory of autism-friendly places across Malta — searchable and filterable by place type and opening times, with photos, opening hours, contact details and downloadable guides for each venue. Alongside it sits an online training area: sequential modules with progress tracking that lead to a PDF certificate, the path by which shop assistants and educators become Autism Ambassadors. An employability section adds easy-read guides for autistic people entering the workplace.

Accessibility is built in rather than bolted on: text-to-speech powered by Azure Cognitive Services, a dark mode, three-step font scaling and a fully translatable interface. The platform ships as a website and as a native Android app that adds notifications and an offline fallback.

03 / THE OUTCOME

Where it landed.

• Live at autismfriendlyspaces.eu, delivered for Prisms Malta with Erasmus+ co-funding.
• Families can search and filter autism-friendly venues across Malta from web or Android.
• Businesses earn Autism Ambassador certification through the platform’s own training modules.
• Text-to-speech, dark mode and adjustable text make the platform usable by the audience it serves.