People with disabilities face many issues when it comes to parking in urban areas which include the limited availability of spaces allocated for their use and the unauthorised usage of such spaces. This paper presents DisAssist which is a system designed and developed based on the principles brought forward by the Internet of Things and Smart Cities initiatives; it integrates sensors and smart phones along with wireless and mobile communications to provide for better utilisation and management of parking spaces allocated for use by people with disabilities. Through the use of DisAssist, people with disabilities may obtain realtime availability of parking slots in an area of interest, reserve a slot and authenticate themselves when parking assisting the authorities with usage monitoring for law enforcement as well as capacity planning purposes. Entitlement verification is possible through a multitude of ways enabling users to embrace technology at the level and format they wish.

Parking in public areas is one of the major problems faced in modern urban environments. This is more so the case for citizens with disabilities who have a limited number of spaces allocated for their exclusive use which are often not enough to meet demand and are sometimes illegitimately occupied. A smart city system that combines mobile and machine-to-machine communications has been designed aiming to alleviate the above issue. The system uses sensors to acquire disabled parking spot availability information which is disseminated to registered users in real time. Utilising such information, users can drive directly towards spots currently available or even reserve one of them. Upon arrival, legitimate users are able to verify themselves through a simple text message, a special device or a smart phone application. User verification enables more efficient monitoring of these precious parking spots.