Quick Info
Project Date
Sept. 1, 2016 - Present
Keywords:
accessibility,
accessible urban navigation,
accessible cities,
physical world accessibility,
accessibility map visualizations,
urban accessibility
News

Oct 07, 2020 | Jon
We are incredibly excited and proud of PhD student Manaswi Saha, who was just honored with the 2020 Google PhD Fellowship for her work on Project Sidewalk and urban accessibility. Congrats Manaswi on this well-deserved recognition for your important work. An excerpt of the official blurb from the Allen School News website: Saha, who is one of 53 students throughout the world to be selected for a Google Fellowship, will use those tools to fill an informational gap between citizens and the local government and stakeholders showing where improvements in sidewalks need to be made to make them accessible to all. “Since the beginning of my academic career, my research interests have been towards socially impactful projects. Public service, especially for underrepresented communities, runs in my family,” Saha said. “The driving force for the work I do stems from my role model, my father, who dedicated his life towards rural and agricultural development in India. His selfless efforts inspired me to explore how technology can be used for the betterment of society. With this goal in mind, I set out to do my Ph.D. with a focus on high-value social problems.” Saha works with Froehlich in the Makeability Lab on one of its flagship ventures, Project Sidewalk. The project has two goals: to develop and study data collection methods for acquiring street-level accessibility information using crowdsourcing, machine learning, and online map imagery and to design and develop navigation and map tools for accessibility.
CSCW2020 June submission results were just released (link), and we were incredibly excited to find out that our paper entitled "Urban Accessibility as a Socio-Political Problem: A Multi-Stakeholder Analysis" was accepted with minor revisions. Of the 593 submissions, only 47 were chosen for 'Minor Revision' (7.9%) and 273 for 'Major Revisions' (46.0%). Through semi-structured interviews with five stakeholder groups, we examine the socio-political challenges surrounding accessible infrastructure development. The paper has some important findings around policy making, gentrification, and urban development tensions related to accessibility and extends and complements our broader research in this area (e.g., Project Sidewalk). Congrats to lead PhD student Manaswi Saha and the rest of the team!

Sep 30, 2019 | Manaswi
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.

Aug 09, 2019 | Jon
Makeability Lab PhD student, Manaswi Saha, has been accepted into the ASSETS'19 Doctoral Consortium where she will present and receive feedback on her doctoral work entitled "Interactive Tools for Assessing and Understanding Urban Accessibility At Scale". Congratulations Manaswi!
We received an Amazon Catalyst award to fund Manaswi Saha's dissertation research on “Combining Computational and Visualization Techniques to Understand Urban Accessibility at Scale.” Congrats Manaswi!

Apr 30, 2019 | Manaswi
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)
About

Assistive Location-Based Technologies (ALTs)
We designed 12 mockups: (a-d) street-level accessibility visualizations, (e) citywide accessibility score comparison, (f) accessibility-aware location search, (g) bus stop accessibility interfaces, (h-j) building accessibility, & (k-l) outdoor wayfinding.
Publications
Interactive Computational Tools for Assessing and Understanding Urban Accessibility At Scale
SIGACCESS Newsletter 2020
PDF | Citation • Project Sidewalk • AccessVis • Accessibility-Infused Maps
Grand challenges in accessible maps
Interactions
PDF | doi | Citation • Project Sidewalk • Accessibility-Infused Maps
Interactively Modeling and Visualizing Neighborhood Accessibility at Scale: An Initial Study of Washington DC
Extended Abstract Proceedings of ASSETS 2018
PDF | doi | Citation • Project Sidewalk • Accessibility-Infused Maps • AccessVis
SIG: Making Maps Accessible and Putting Accessibility in Maps
Extended Abstract Proceedings of CHI 2018
PDF | doi | Citation • Project Sidewalk • Accessibility-Infused Maps
The Design of Assistive Location-based Technologies for People with Ambulatory Disabilities: A Formative Study
Proceedings of CHI 2016 | Acceptance Rate: 25.0% (600 / 2400)
PDF | doi | Citation • Accessibility-Infused Maps • Project Sidewalk
Talks
Jan. 22, 2020 | Google Tech Talk
Seattle, WA
PDF | PPTX | Project Sidewalk | Deep Learning for Sidewalk Assessment | AccessVis | Accessibility-Infused Maps | Urban Accessibility Evolution | Transportation Analytics
Oct. 9, 2018 | Change Seminar
University of Washington, Seattle
Current Project Members


Manaswi Saha
Jan 2018 - Present
PhD Student
Computer Science and Engineering
University of Washington
Project Sidewalk | Accessibility-Infused Maps | AccessVis
Past Project Members

Anthony Li
Oct 2018 - Jul 2019
Undergrad
Computer Science
University of Maryland
Project Sidewalk | Deep Learning for Sidewalk Assessment | Accessibility-Infused Maps