If you have
inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), getting out of your house can be difficult when you aren't well enough to be far from a bathroom. Thankfully, there are now many web sites that you can use to find public bathrooms online. Whether you are just going out
shopping locally or you are
taking a vacation overseas, you can use these applications to find the nearest public toilet.
The counter at the top of the site keeps track of how many toilets are in the database -- over 62,000. For the most part, toilets in the database are at service centers and Starbucks coffee houses. Users can rate toilets and make any comments as well as add pictures. Users can also add toilets themselves. The site is also available on the iPhone and iPhone Touch via iTunes.
This site has rated more than 12,000 toilet in 100 countries. That's a lot of public restrooms, but when you get down the local level, any particular city might only have 1 or 2 bathrooms in the database. Ratings include the type of facility, any fee, the hours it's open, what is available (such as changing table or wheelchair access), and a general overall rating (from excellent to horrible).
Billed as the bathroom database for the "discerning, on-the-go defecator," Diaroogle.com has information on toilets in three cities: New York City, San Francisco, and London. An iPhone application for the 200 New York City toilets in the database is also available from iTunes for $.99. Users can add toilet locations, as well as reviews and pictures of public facilities.
This site lists more than 2000 bathrooms in more than 500 cities across the world. A fun feature of this site is the city tag cloud, which shows a visual representation of the database, with cities having more entries being listed in a larger font size. This is a great site to check before heading on vacation, as some of the cities with more entries are popular vacation spots. Users can add bathrooms to the site as well as upload pictures and make comments.
This database, which is accessible on your
cell phone, details public bathrooms across the United Kingdom. Information included about the toilets include the opening times, what facilities are available, and directions. Find a Toilet also uses the
Microsoft Tag widget, which you can use to access the web site without typing the URL into your phone.
This new web site from the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of Canada (CCFC) focuses on public bathrooms across Canada. Because it's just getting started, most of the bathrooms listed are in big cities. However, the CCFC will be able to leverage its members to add more bathrooms quickly. You can access entries three ways -- by searching, on the map, or from a list organized first by city and then drilling down to neighborhood.
