Yelp is launching a new feature that will identify restaurants and other businesses that offer gender-neutral bathrooms to patrons.
The crowd-sourced review website says that it classifies a gender-neutral restroom as one that is single-stall, lockable, and accessible to any gender. Both its mobile app and desktop platform will let users see if a business has such a lavatory.
“We will also be rolling out the ability to search for businesses on Yelp by the Gender Neutral Restrooms attribute in the weeks to come,” Rachel Williams, head of diversity and inclusion at Yelp, wrote Friday on an official company blog post.
Yelp says it will gather such information in two primary ways.
Users patronizing the businesses can virtually check-in through Yelp and notify the review company if there is a gender-neutral bathroom available, a method of data-gathering that many interactive websites use, like Facebook.
Owners can also edit their business user account to indicate that they provide unisex restroom accommodations.
Yelp is one of the several companies that has joined an amicus brief in support of Gavin Grimm, a transgender male student who is suing his local school board in Virginia for denying him access to the men’s restroom. (RELATED: Yelp Appealing Court Order Forcing It To Remove Negative Comment)
“The need to speak up on these issues has become depressingly more frequent. In 2014, Yelp urged the Governor of Arizona (where Yelp is a large employer) to veto a state law that would have allowed retailers to discriminate against LGBTQ consumers,” the company announced Thursday.
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