Home Free Accessibility Extension

About

Update note: HomeFree 3.0 now offers the ability to export a listing accessibility assessment to PDF, fully user-initiated.

HomeFree Accessibility Insights for Property Listings
Developed as part of a university project, HomeFree is a lightweight Chrome extension designed to help users, especially those with mobility needs, assess how accessible a property may be, directly from the listing page on realestate.com.au.

HomeFree works by scanning property listings for common accessibility features such as:

Step-free or single-level entry
Wide doorways and hallways
Grab rails and roll-in showers
Elevators or stairlifts
Smart locks and lever handles
Non-slip flooring
Visual/auditory aids

It uses keyword detection on the page to calculate a Property Accessibility Score and combines that with real-world neighbourhood accessibility data such as proximity to public toilets or wheelchair-friendly infrastructure. Neighbourhood data is sourced using:
Nominatim (OpenStreetMap), for geocoding the listing address, Home Free API, for nearby accessibility infrastructure data (from open data sources). These are combined into a Total Accessibility Score out of 10, displayed on a floating panel on the page.

Key Features:

Automatic detection of accessibility-related terms in property descriptions
Combines listing analysis with nearby infrastructure data
Graceful fallback to suburb-level data if full address isn’t available
No need to copy-paste or navigate away, insights are shown directly on the listing page and can be exported to PDF
Toggleable view of found features and scoring breakdown
Built using FastAPI backend and OpenStreetMap data for real-time analysis

Privacy & Data Handling:

Only publicly available listing address data is sent off-device, and only to the services above (Nominatim + Home Free API) for score calculation
No personally identifiable information, cookies, or browsing history are collected
Data is used only for generating on-page accessibility scores and is not stored, sold, or shared for advertising purposes
Permissions are limited to supported listing domains and required APIs

Who Is This For?
People with mobility challenges
Carers and family members assessing housing for loved ones
Occupational therapists or housing advisors
Anyone wanting a quick accessibility summary without reading long descriptions