Makeability Lab high school research assistant extraordinaire Naomi Bashkansky named Coolidge Senator—a tremendous honor: only 100 of 3,400 applicants received this award. Coolidge Senators receive a one-time $1,000 college scholarship and are invited to take part in an all-expenses-paid trip to the annual Coolidge Senators Summit in Washington, D.C. 

We are experiencing a historic moment: a worldwide pandemic, record-breaking unemployment rates, glaringly anti-education and anti-immigration rhetoric and policies from the White House (link), and now, protests and rightful anger about the unjust death of George Floyd and the systemic racism that plagues the US. The Makeability Lab stands with the Black and African-American communities. We must all work together to combat the hate and racism and the social and economic injustices in our society. We must hold each other accountable—from our friends to our family members to our institutions. We must do more. As an educator, as a father, and as a human, I am morally obligated and emotionally bound to proactively fight for a better future and help positively shape society. I will use my privilege to fight.  Jon

We are incredibly excited to announce the launch of the Center for Research and Education on Accessible Technology and Experiences (CREATE), which is fueled by a generous $2.5 million investment from Microsoft and helps amplify and unite UW's strength and leadership in accessibility research, education, and translation. The Makeability Lab is a co-founding member and Professor Froehlich is co-founding associate director.  Read more here.

Congratulations to Liang on being accepted to the DUB DC!

Anh Nguyen of the UW Daily wrote an article about Project Sidewalk and using "big data for pedestrian accessibility." The article features PhD student Manaswi Saha. Check it out here.

The Columbus, OH deployment of Project Sidewalk was just covered by the local ABC news station. The 2.5 minute segment (view it here) featured Dean Allemang, one of the lead volunteers of the Project Sidewalk Columbus deployment.

Manaswi Saha gave an invited Google Tech Talk on Project Sidewalk and interactive accessibility geo-visualizations. The talk slides are here.

Our ASSETS'19 paper "Deep Learning for Automatically Detecting Sidewalk Accessibility Problems Using Streetscape Imagery" was just recognized with the 'Best Student Paper Award'--given to only one of the 158 submissions

Congrats team!