Add a PublicToilet type

[danbri]

This has often cropped up in conversation but we never put the time into actually adding the vocabulary. I suggest we add a type for PublicToilet as it addresses a fundamental and universal truth of human experience.

Also specifically I would like to use it for two case studies:

• #254 - physical accessibility of places. We have discussed this before but got stuck on details/scope.
• #1623 - mapping of tabular data into schema.org descriptions. There are various efforts to make available datasets describing public toilets, their locations and other properties, typically using tabular data.

Proposed definition

• The English Wikipedia says "A public toilet is a room or small building containing one or more toilets (and possibly also urinals) which is available for use by the general public, or by customers or employees of certain businesses."; this seems reasonable (Wikidata:
  Q813966).
• supertype would be CivicStructure, i.e. a kind of Place.
• We should show how to apply existing vocabulary for opening hours, locations, constraints on intended users including gender. Again from Wikipedia, "Public toilets are commonly separated into male and female facilities, although some can be unisex, particularly the smaller or single-occupancy types. Increasingly, public toilets are accessible to people with disabilities.".
• We should examing open data datasets and try to match as much of their expressivity as possible. This can be explored via W3C CSVW mappings, per #1623.

Sample datasets

UK, thanks to GDS for details

From a UK initiative in which various datasets (including public toilets data) were published by local authorities (exploratory / non-mandatory so only partial coverage).

• UK PublicToilets schema documentation including pdf overview and github.
• The published toilets data to this schema by participating councils is available on data.gov.uk and on the LGA’s open data resources pages.
• An aggregation tool is also available

• this creates a csv of all the data published to the schema (see the link at the bottom of the page in the previous link).

• The Great British Toilet Map (generated from this data)

Related UK data

• e.g. Northumberland data
• Rushmoor
• Banes / Bath via Socrata. /cc @ldodds

Other / misc

• Australian National Public Toilet Map e.g. Melbourne

[danbri]

/cc @chaals re #254, @JeniT + @gkellogg re CSVW/#1623

[danbri]

1st cut draft is in the pending section of the (editorial staging site) http://pending.webschemas.org/PublicToilet

It has no treatment of the gender issue, yet.

[thadguidry]

@danbri there is no gender issue. Toilets don't care.

[danbri]

@thadguidry we get to describe the world as it is, rather than the world as we'd like it to be. Given schema.org's search-oriented focus, helping people find toilets that they can comfortably use seems a good usecase. And comfort here will inevitably involve matters including physical accessibility and social comfort including gender-related expectations.

FWIW the UK schema linked above has these values for 'category':

Female; Male; Female and male; Unisex; Male urinal; Children only; None

I wonder whether subtyping might be the best-fit for expressing these; it isn't a pure 'gender' property but also includes ('Male urinal') the kind of toilet facilities offered. Let's see what other countries / datasets have to say on the matter.

[danbri]

Perhaps as a stopgap mapping for prototypes, we could therefore represent strings like "Male urinal" as a http://schema.org/category on the Place (although 'category' doesn't technically apply to Place, at least yet).

[thadguidry]

@danbri It was a joke. Forgot to include my smiley face :) In the States, we're dealing with public pushback of laws allowing cross-gender access even in elementary schools (little boy allowed to go into little girls restroom if he tells teacher he feels more like a girl today). For what its worth, I think folks here are just making too big a deal out of nothing and paranoia is running rampant.

But I am completely on-board with this proposal and agree with you and Tim @mediaprophet

[ghost]

I think the US term might be restRoom? Other places bathRoom? The schema is actually more complicated than one would give it credit for. Including typesoftoilets, Disabled access, hot/cold water, babychangetables, sanitaryDisposal, opening hours, syringeBins, shower, male/female/mixed, ElectricalOutlets, nightlighting, Not sure about the squirter thing vs. toiletPaper, toiletseatprotectors, Ratings, GPS coordinates, Not sure what else....?? Tim.h.

…

On Mon., 15 May 2017, 11:59 pm Thad Guidry, ***@***.***> wrote: @danbri <https://github.com/danbri> It was a joke. Forgot to include my smiley face :) In the States, we're dealing with public pushback of laws allowing cross-gender access even in elementary schools (little boy allowed to go into little girls restroom if he tells teacher he fells more like a girl today). For what its worth, I think folks here are just making too big a deal out of nothing and paranoia is running rampant. But I am completely on-board with this proposal and agree with you and Tim @mediaprophet <https://github.com/mediaprophet> — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#1624 (comment)>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AFdABrGhwMEuOvecHvXBK2xqZv-4iO8wks5r6FpLgaJpZM4NZ_p6> .

[ghost]

Could also list vendingMachines (ie: condoms, sanitaryNapkins(?)), Oh and drinking water... Mirrors (and mirrorType?) Whether their free, available for public use, customer use, fee payable facilities, attendants, etc. It's late. Happy to write a more formal response tomorrow. Might find a place becomes more.marketable with a good way to promote a clean and comfortable "bathroom". Tim.h. On Tue., 16 May 2017, 12:10 am Timothy Holborn, <timothy.holborn@gmail.com> wrote:

…

I think the US term might be restRoom? Other places bathRoom? The schema is actually more complicated than one would give it credit for. Including typesoftoilets, Disabled access, hot/cold water, babychangetables, sanitaryDisposal, opening hours, syringeBins, shower, male/female/mixed, ElectricalOutlets, nightlighting, Not sure about the squirter thing vs. toiletPaper, toiletseatprotectors, Ratings, GPS coordinates, Not sure what else....?? Tim.h. On Mon., 15 May 2017, 11:59 pm Thad Guidry, ***@***.***> wrote: > @danbri <https://github.com/danbri> It was a joke. Forgot to include my > smiley face :) In the States, we're dealing with public pushback of laws > allowing cross-gender access even in elementary schools (little boy allowed > to go into little girls restroom if he tells teacher he fells more like a > girl today). For what its worth, I think folks here are just making too big > a deal out of nothing and paranoia is running rampant. > > But I am completely on-board with this proposal and agree with you and > Tim @mediaprophet <https://github.com/mediaprophet> > > — > You are receiving this because you were mentioned. > Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub > <#1624 (comment)>, > or mute the thread > <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AFdABrGhwMEuOvecHvXBK2xqZv-4iO8wks5r6FpLgaJpZM4NZ_p6> > . >

[ghost]

Sorry. Forgot accessibility. Ie: handrails, et.al. Important for elderly. On Tue., 16 May 2017, 12:16 am Timothy Holborn, <timothy.holborn@gmail.com> wrote:

…

Could also list vendingMachines (ie: condoms, sanitaryNapkins(?)), Oh and drinking water... Mirrors (and mirrorType?) Whether their free, available for public use, customer use, fee payable facilities, attendants, etc. It's late. Happy to write a more formal response tomorrow. Might find a place becomes more.marketable with a good way to promote a clean and comfortable "bathroom". Tim.h. On Tue., 16 May 2017, 12:10 am Timothy Holborn, ***@***.***> wrote: > I think the US term might be restRoom? Other places bathRoom? > > The schema is actually more complicated than one would give it credit > for. Including typesoftoilets, Disabled access, hot/cold water, > babychangetables, sanitaryDisposal, opening hours, syringeBins, shower, > male/female/mixed, ElectricalOutlets, nightlighting, > > Not sure about the squirter thing vs. toiletPaper, toiletseatprotectors, > Ratings, > GPS coordinates, > > Not sure what else....?? > > Tim.h. > > On Mon., 15 May 2017, 11:59 pm Thad Guidry, ***@***.***> > wrote: > >> @danbri <https://github.com/danbri> It was a joke. Forgot to include my >> smiley face :) In the States, we're dealing with public pushback of laws >> allowing cross-gender access even in elementary schools (little boy allowed >> to go into little girls restroom if he tells teacher he fells more like a >> girl today). For what its worth, I think folks here are just making too big >> a deal out of nothing and paranoia is running rampant. >> >> But I am completely on-board with this proposal and agree with you and >> Tim @mediaprophet <https://github.com/mediaprophet> >> >> — >> You are receiving this because you were mentioned. >> Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub >> <#1624 (comment)>, >> or mute the thread >> <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AFdABrGhwMEuOvecHvXBK2xqZv-4iO8wks5r6FpLgaJpZM4NZ_p6> >> . >> >

[ghost]

@danbri based in AU conditions, i've outlined the following below. I think the main 'big' thing is whether they're squat toilets or based on the design of the porcelain throne.

The other thing i note, is that some use hand-dryers, paper towel, toilet paper or water squirter alternatives; and i'm not sure what the cultural implications are broadly speaking. I've therefore added "toiletType".

with respect to the cultural implications, i started: https://github.com/schemaorg/schemaorg/issues/1661

notes:
Name: "text"
Male: "boolean"
Female: "boolean"
Unisex: "boolean"
FacilityType: "text"
ToiletType: "text"
accessibleMale: "boolean"
accessibleFemale: "boolean"
accessibleUnisex: "boolean"
paymentRequired: "boolean"
keyRequired: "boolean"
keyLocation: "text" (or url? ie: cafe or service station has the key to a public toilet)
handDryer: "boolean"
BabyChange: "boolean"
Showers: "boolean"
DrinkingWater: "boolean"
SharpsDisposal: "boolean"
SanitaryDisposal: "boolean"
seatCovers: "boolean"
bidetShower: "boolean"
bidet: "boolean"
footBath: "boolean"
ablution: "boolean"
Parking: "boolean"
ParkingAccessible: "boolean"

WIKIDATA ENTRIES
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q813966 (PUBLIC TOILET)

[stevenjmesser]

Really pleased to see that this has been picked up by the community and conversations continue. I was part of the team working on the original schema from the incentive scheme, and it's interesting to see lots of additional properties being mentioned.

The scope of our work was to encourage local authorities to publish more open data and train them to do so, but many of the properties you've suggested were left out, simply because it would take too much effort for strained LA teams to collect the data. But I imagine that could be easily overcome by starting a project akin to OpenBenches for public toilets.

[nicolastorzec]

Shall we also capture gender-and-age-based restrictions?
=> e.g., "Boys older than 4yo must use the Men’s restroom"

Note that similar restrictions can be found at local gyms and swimming pools:
=> e.g., "Lap lanes are for children OVER SIX"

[danbri]

Also noting for the record, http://toilet.org.sg/loomapdirectory - "A Gracious Society Embracing Excellence in Restroom Culture", directory of public toilets in Singapore. Via Twitter discussion.

[cedon]

One thing to note, some venues here in the US also have what they call a "Family Toilet" as well. These are independent of the typical "Mens" and "Womens" rooms and are for parent(s) with children. That way the age restrictions @nicolastorzec mentions are not a concern and a mother(s) and/or father(s) can take their kids into a single facility.

[opyh]

schemaorg/suggestions-questions-brainstorming#40 might be interesting as an extension here.

[danbri]

We did it, http://schema.org/PublicToilet

We can continue to discuss toilet data here, but I'll close the issue for now.