Hello Spaces community! 👋
It's been a few months since our last update and we have been busy. This is one of the biggest releases Spaces has had: improved accessibility built to meet WCAG 2.1 AA guideline, a new way to find accessible QR codes around a space, landmarks that can carry richer custom content with ready-made templates, smarter navigation that thinks about effort the way a person would, and some serious performance gains under the hood.
Here's a quick look at what's new.
Spaces exists to help everyone find their way around a building independently, so accessibility isn't a nice-to-have; it's the core purpose of the product. With this update, we've gone through the interface properly and rebuilt it to meet WCAG 2.1 AA guidelines throughout.
That covers things like colour contrast, keyboard navigation, screen reader support, and visible focus states, all applied consistently rather than just on the screens visitors see. The editor experience has had the same treatment, so if you're the one building and maintaining a space, that side of things should now be just as accessible to you as it is to your end users.
Accessibility work is never really finished, and we'll keep testing and refining as we go, but this update is a big step toward Spaces looking and working the way it should for everyone using it.
It works with point-of-interest codes already in use in some industrial deployments, as well as the same Accessible QR codes we've been rolling out on consumer products. That means blind and low-vision users can find the exact thing they're looking for, not just the general area it's in.
Landmarks can now feature rich content: images, video, audio, and formatted text. That means a landmark can be a photo of a reception desk, a short welcome video, an audio clip with information read aloud, or just a nicely formatted description, whatever suits the space.
Adding them is quicker too. There's now a bank of built-in templates to pick from, each with its own set of fields, so landmarks come out with the right category set automatically. Every template is also available in 10 languages from the start, so you're not translating each one by hand.
New users now get a short onboarding step on their first visit. It covers:
When someone starts navigating, Spaces now works out which routes are actually available and, where there's a genuine choice, lets them pick:
We've also improved floor detection accuracy by excluding outdoor areas from the calculation, so it's more reliable indoors where it matters.
When browsing or searching for landmarks, you can now jump straight into navigation, or open the full landmark information first. Whichever you need.
We've changed how we call MultiSet to improve accuracy and reduce false positives.
Worth knowing: if you're on MultiSet's free plan, Spaces will now show a MultiSet watermark. Get in touch to learn more about how to remove the MultiSet watermark.
Spaces now loads faster and needs less data to do it, anywhere from 2x to 10x less depending on the space. A few things are behind that improvement:
If you're actively working on a Space or want to get these benefits into an existing Space, your VPS map needs to be reprocessed: Manage > Structure > Maps > [your map] > Save. This same change also fixes an issue where landmark placement could fail on mobile. If you're starting afresh, don't worry about this step.
Android WebXR support returns for anyone running Chrome 150 or later. We've been working directly with the Chromium team on several fixes to their WebXR support, and this addresses the worst of the problems.
To be honest about where things stand: there are still some keyboard quirks (this build uses a virtual keyboard on Android WebXR), and a few graphical and performance issues remain. We're continuing to work with Chromium on both.
For the end user, they are given an option on first load to either install the Android app or use WebXR for a no-app download, web-based version. Both options should have a near-exact end user experience (excluding the small quirks above).
You can now move around using WASD or the arrow keys, alongside clicking the white footprints. And if you're testing a route in Walk mode and reach an elevator, you'll now get a "Take Me There" option rather than getting stuck.
Get in touch to learn more about making your space easy to navigate for everyone, including sighted, non-sighted and wheelchair users.
What is Zapworks Spaces?
Zapworks Spaces is an app-free, indoor navigation and wayfinding platform for complex buildings like hospitals, shopping centres, offices, and industrial facilities. Spaces delivers precise, turn‑by‑turn guidance in the browser for blind, low vision and wheelchair users in one shared experience — no app install, no extra hardware, and no ongoing infrastructure maintenance.
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