Recent News

Makeability Lab member Manaswi Saha was an invited keynote speaker to the Washingtion State Ridesharing Organization (WSRO) conference. She gave a talk on Project Sidewalk entitled Project Sidewalk: Mapping the accessibility of the physical world at scale using interactive computational tools. Congrats Manaswi and thanks for representing the Project Sidewalk team.

With the recent Seattle and Newberg launch of Project Sidewalk, we have been getting a lot of media attention. Here are a few articles so far (many more to come!): Newberg streets second in nation to be studied with new accessibility metric (The Newberg Graphic, April 2019) Seattle's got terrible sidewalks. You can help fix them. (Crosscut, April 2019)

Transportation Techies DC had hosted their second WalkHackNight in Crystal City. Project Sidewalk team was honored to be invited to give a talk at this event. It is the second time for Project Sidewalk to be presenting at this event.

Project Sidewalk was covered by a DC TV station, WUSA9. Check out the video coverage and the news report now! This is exciting!

We were honored to participate in the inaugural Diversity in Computing Summit. Makeability Lab and Inclusive Design Lab members presented a joint session on their accessibility research. The session, entitled "Interactive Computational Tools for Accessibility," covered work on Project Sidewalk (by Manaswi Saha), Temporal Tracking of Accessibility Features in Cities (by Ladan Najafizadeh) , Health and Fitness for the Mobility Impaired (by Meethu Malu), Accessible On-body Interaction for the Visually Impaired (by Uran Oh) and HandSight (by Lee Stearns). Talk slides are available here.

Projects

Project Sidewalk

2012 – Present

AccessVis

2018 – Present

Publications

The Future of Urban Accessibility for People with Disabilities: Data Collection, Analytics, Policy, and Tools

Jon E. Froehlich, Yochai Eisenberg, Maryam Hosseini, Fabio Miranda, Marc Adams, Anat Caspi, Holger Dieterich, Heather Feldner, Aldo Gonzalez, Claudina de Gyves, Joy Hammel, Reuben Kirkham, Melanie Kneisel, Delphine Labbé, Stephen J. Mooney, Victor Pineda, Cláudia Pinhão, Ana Rodríguez, Manaswi Saha, Mikey Saugstad, Judy L. Shanley, Ather Sharif, Qing Shen, Claudio Silva, Maarten Sukel, Eric K. Tokuda, Sebastian Felix Zappe, Anna Zivarts

Extended Abstract ASSETS'22 Workshop on The Future of Urban Accessibility

Designing Interactive Data-Driven Tools for Understanding Urban Accessibility at Scale

Manaswi Saha

UW CS PhD Dissertation

Visualizing Urban Accessibility: Investigating Multi-Stakeholder Perspectives through a Map-based Design Probe Study

Manaswi Saha, Siddhant Patil, Emily Cho, Evie Yu-Yen Cheng, Chris Horng, Devanshi Chauhan, Rachel Kangas, Richard McGovern, Anthony Li, Jeffrey Heer, Jon E. Froehlich

Proceedings of CHI 2022 | Acceptance Rate: 24.7% (637 / 2579)

The Future of Global-Scale Spatial Data Collection and Analyses on Urban (in)Accessibility for People with Disabilities

Jon E. Froehlich, Fabio Miranda, Maryam Hosseini, Nicholas Bolten, Anat Caspi, Roberto M. Cesar Jr., Holger Dieterich, Yochai Eisenberg, Victor Pineda, Manaswi Saha, Mikey Saugstad, Andres Sevtsuk, Cláudio T. Silva, Eric K. Tokuda, Sebastian Felix Zappe

Extended Abstract Spatial Data Science Symposium 2021

Urban Accessibility as a Socio-Political Problem: A Multi-Stakeholder Analysis

Manaswi Saha, Devanshi Chauhan, Siddhant Patil, Rachel Kangas, Jeffrey Heer, Jon E. Froehlich

CSCW 2020

Towards Mapping and Assessing Sidewalk Accessibility Across Socio-cultural and Geographic Contexts

Jon E. Froehlich, Mikey Saugstad, Manaswi Saha, Matthew Johnson

Extended Abstract Data4Good

Interactive Computational Tools for Assessing and Understanding Urban Accessibility At Scale

Manaswi Saha

SIGACCESS Newsletter 2020

Project Sidewalk: A Web-based Crowdsourcing Tool for Collecting Sidewalk Accessibility Data at Scale

Manaswi Saha, Mikey Saugstad, Teja Maddali, Aileen Zeng, Ryan Holland, Steven Bower, Aditya Dash, Sage Chen, Anthony Li, Kotaro Hara, Jon E. Froehlich

Proceedings of CHI 2019 | Acceptance Rate: 23.8% (705 / 2960) | Best Paper Award

Interactively Modeling and Visualizing Neighborhood Accessibility at Scale: An Initial Study of Washington DC

Anthony Li, Manaswi Saha, Anupam Gupta, Jon E. Froehlich

Extended Abstract Proceedings of ASSETS 2018

A Pilot Deployment of an Online Tool for Large-Scale Virtual Auditing of Urban Accessibility

Manaswi Saha, Kotaro Hara, Soheil Behnezhad, Anthony Li, Mikey Saugstad, Teja Maddali, Sage Chen, Jon E. Froehlich

Extended Abstract Proceedings of ASSETS 2017

Exploring Novice Approaches to Smartphone-based Thermographic Energy Auditing: A Field Study

Matthew L Mauriello, Manaswi Saha, Erica Brown, Jon E. Froehlich

Proceedings of CHI 2017 | Acceptance Rate: 25.0% (606 / 2424)

The Future Role of Thermography in Human-Building Interaction

Matthew L Mauriello, Matthew Dahlhausen, Erica Brown, Manaswi Saha, Jon E. Froehlich

CHI 2016 Workshop: Future of Human-Building Interaction

Talks

Tech+Design: Interaction Design for a Purpose

Nov. 3, 2016 | Technica: Tech+X Talk Series

University of Maryland, College Park

Soheil Behnezhad, Liang He, Majeed Kazemitabaar, Manaswi Saha