July of 2009, I was
walking to work my usual morning
walk. I would cut through Central
Park to sort of clear my head a
little bit and a giant branch
fell from a tree on top of
my head.
Finally, seven months after the
accident, they discharged me from
the hospital.
It's a brain injury and those are
really unpredictable.
What changed was I didn't
care about the same things as
much...
When I had to come to the office, I
couldn't get there the same way.
I couldn't take the subway anymore
because it wasn't wheelchair
accessible.
I was like, doesn't anybody know?
Like this is messed up.
Wheelchair accessible routing in
maps has been, something that
I've wanted in maps for
pretty much my whole lifetime
that I've been in a wheelchair,
which was, you know, from age 2
onward.
I think it really is useful
to learn and to approach
individuals who
are different from you.
The first step is to figure out,
let's talk to all sorts
of users and make sure that their
experience with my product, with my
idea, is good.
In 2016, there was a hackathon.
An accessibility sprint week.
And I saw a project
that Rio had put out there for
making maps accessible
in terms of routing.
I thought that was such a personally
meaningful kind of project
and I was so excited to jump
onboard.
What we came to it with was
well what if we improved
maps and improved in particular
the transit directions within maps
by showing which public transit
routes are wheelchair accessible.
And so that's how that started.
And so we built a small demo
of that within one week long
sprint.
Yeah, we were a ragtag team
of Googlers just united by
a common cause.
All in all, it took probably
more than a year to go from
hackathon to
actual product in the user's hands.
I mean a lot of the pushback before
it launched was.
Well, what if that elevator goes
out? What if this?
What is that? All totally valid
concerns.
But always our line was
just get it out there and
it won't be perfect.
But it'll be so much better than
having nothing at all.
And then that's how we'll find out
what's working and not, you know,
once it's out there. That's that's
how people will know.
And so that's what we've done and
it's just been rolling forward
since.
When you use the public transit
option as opposed to walking or
driving.
It gives you the option to say how
do you want to go, one of
which is wheelchair accessible.
And so when you select that, what
happens underneath the hood is
Google Maps goes into
its database, figures out what
routes...
What train stations?
What transit options are accessible
based on the data we have and
reroutes you such that if,
for example, the first route that
you were given might have been the
shortest one, but actually
going through a station that you
couldn't use for
a variety of accessibility reasons..
You could actually ignore those
stations and reroute your stations
so you would have a route that
actually works.
The way that transit agencies
can provide this data
is through a data format
called GTFS
or the general transit
feed specification.
Being able to know
from Google Maps,
Hey, you should avoid this station
that's inaccessible.
Let me route you with a way that is
accessible, that's kind of
life changing because
it gives you that sense of
independence and confidence back
when you're traveling.
Accessibility should be built
into the app on the ground
up, adding those accessibility
features is unlocking
usability for a huge,
huge portion of the population.
This virtuous cycle of physical
accessibility that we're all
actually already a part of it.
You know, like it or not, if you
exist in the world.
Visibility assigns the first step.
Just having a video like this out
there and people say, oh, yeah,
that can sort of lead to more
awareness. So then it's just on
their radar somewhere.
Then the next time they're building
up an update to their map.
They'll say, oh is this wheelchair
accessible? Once you have that
access, then people with
disabilities, people with mobility
needs, they show up.
And when they're there, when we're
there, we're seen.
And when you're seen you're real and
that starts the cycle again, that
that's that kind of visibility.
And then there you go.
I want in the developer community
to sort of just seed that visibility
that we're here.
It's a moral thing to do it's the
right thing to do.
It's an opportunity. We're users.
We're customers, and we have
families just
from a pure nitty gritty dollars and cents
perspective.
It's a good move.
Maps has a particularly
important responsibility
in helping decipher
the real world.
And I think
the ability for someone to just use
an app to enter a space
to be part of a business
is is a basic basic right.