Puerto Rico Reporta: Making visible what often goes unnoticed

There are things we do not see until we experience them ourselves.

Several years ago, my family began facing a reality that, until then, had felt distant from us. My grandmother lost a leg due to complications related to diabetes. Suddenly, activities that once seemed simple began to depend on something many of us take for granted: the ability to move safely and accessibly.

That was when I began to look at our surroundings differently.

I started noticing the missing ramps, the interrupted sidewalks, the unsafe crossings, and the barriers that made it difficult for many people to live independently. I also discovered something that would stay with me for years to come: many of these barriers are well known to the people who face them every day, yet they remain invisible to much of society.

And when something remains invisible, it becomes much harder to talk about it, understand it, or address it.

Years later, while working and studying issues related to planning, infrastructure, and transportation, I kept returning to the same question:

How can we better understand the challenges our communities face if we do not have a simple way to document and visualize them?

Puerto Rico Reporta was born from that question.

Puerto Rico Reporta is a civic participation platform designed to help document and bring visibility to barriers that affect mobility and accessibility in our communities.

Participation begins with something simple: when someone encounters a barrier, they can report it. That report becomes part of a public map that helps build a clearer picture of the reality many people face every day.

Every report tells a story.

It may be the story of a person who could not get to a medical appointment because a sidewalk was blocked. It may be the story of an older adult who avoids walking through a dangerous crossing. It may be the story of a mother pushing a stroller or of someone recovering from a temporary injury.

We often think of accessibility as an issue that affects only some people. The reality is that all of us, at some point in our lives, may encounter a barrier that limits our mobility or independence.

That is why Puerto Rico Reporta is not only about infrastructure.

It is not only about accessibility.

It is about visibility.

Because many barriers remain invisible until someone documents them.

The platform brings together the lived experience of people who face these situations, collaborative mapping, and technological tools that help identify potential barriers. Still, the most important piece remains the community. No tool understands a barrier better than the person who faces it.

Our goal is to transform everyday observations into visual evidence that helps us better understand the challenges present in our communities.

Approved reports are displayed publicly through maps, statistics, and dashboards that make it possible to identify patterns and increase the visibility of problems that might otherwise go unnoticed.

Puerto Rico Reporta exists because we believe that a community that can see its challenges more clearly can also have better conversations about them.

And every transformation begins with something as simple as observing, documenting, and sharing.