Beacon Commons
We are proud to be working with the community to fill a critical gap in accessibility by developing innovative ways for residents of King County to access accurate information about local resources. Hyper-local, rapidly updated, and accessible information is the foundation of our mission.
Based on the amazing software that Streetlives NYC has graciously licensed as open source, we are in the process of launching a King County-focused sibling of Streetlives' YourPeer.nyc platform. Built on the HSDS standard and optimized for smooth updating and sharing of hyper-local resource information.
The Guide — Accessible Natural Language Interface
Access verified King County resources with an easy to use interface.
Natural Language
Keywords aren't necessary because the Guide understands natural language. It's as easy as typing or saying "I'm hungry" and it understands that the request is to find a list of local food banks and pantries.
Accessibility
We are disabled ourselves and passionate about accessibility.
The goal isn't to meet compliance and provide the bare minimum. We are aiming to push the boundaries of accessibility by making our platform as inclusive as possible, compassionately serving blind, deaf, cognitively impaired, mobility impaired, and those with limited literacy or troubles with technology. Multilingual support is also built in.
Safety and Privacy
No third party tracking, no data collection, no ads.
We are beyond committed to protecting privacy. We do not track users, collect data, or serve ads. Anything sent is anonymized and personally identifiable information is stripped as the very first step. Anything saved is entirely on the device. We understand the sensitivity of the information we are dealing with and prefer to sidestep the issue entirely by collecting nothing.
Conduit — A Platform for Resource Verification
We know how important it is that potentially life-saving results are accurate and up to date.
Many services have closed since Covid, shelters have moved, and new services have become available. To address this we have a system where social workers with the most recent knowledge work with community volunteers to validate all the fragmented information that exists about resources in King County.
Once resources are verified they are added to our database and can be accessed by the public, assured that the information is accurate and up to date.
The Future
The Beacon Commons is a way for social services to scale with technology and continue to serve the community with verified resources into the future.