Sasha and his Google Maps team enjoying time with the Eyes over Birmingham statue at the entrance of Vulcan Park and Museum Birmingham , Alabama , March 2024
be reliable . And right now , they ' re not . We ' re still fighting in court to force them to commit to a reliability standard , beyond sort of a best effort . This is not only a nice thing and a moral thing , but simply a business benefit that when elevators are reliable , more people will take the subway , more young families with strollers are going to settle here ; more older people want to retire here , etc . And it seems so obvious . But then on the other side , there ' s still a thought : Oh , this is a cost . There ’ s those kinds of objections . It makes you want to stay out there and keep having those wins .
A Google eye imagining elite athletes getting around in Paris . The wins are coming . A couple of years ago , Sasha and his Google Maps team turned their attention to the upcoming Paralympic Games in Paris . They talked about a “ ton of disabled people , athletes , coming to Paris this late August .” The team recognized the great opportunity to help Paralympians , their families , and coaches get around using Google Maps . Within the team they raised awareness of their role to ensure the Map features works well in Paris , generating momentum from that point . It worked .
SASHA : “ The good news is that that we succeeded , and I got a lot of helpers , within Maps and volunteers on engineering , but also on the on the advertising and media side , to see this as a worthwhile task . We ' re working really hard on that .”
Sasha and a team – two other wheelchair users and two others that are blind – got to travel together to Birmingham , Alabama in March . They visited the location where The US Paralympic wheelchair rugby team practiced . Stoked by the idea of meeting these elite athletes , Sasha ’ s own team was also eager to learn firsthand the experience of traveling through an unfamiliar setting and using Google Maps as a tool to get around .
SASHA : “ Like what works , what could be better , and then also hear from the athletes and what their experience has been . They go to tournaments and competitions all over the world all the time . They ’ re hopefully going to be some of them in Paris this summer . It ’ s a great opportunity to make friends and form community , and I ' m looking forward to that .”
Using AI to optimize for better accessibility . Looking ahead at the role AI can play in accessible travel is a huge topic , but not an entirely new concept . Sasha referred to the way AI has already been in use for some of the techniques for making statistical estimates .
SASHA : “ Practically , we ' ll meet deciding in Google Maps to put the wheelchair icon on a place to indicate that it has a wheelchair accessible entrance or with a strikethrough to indicate that it does not . We only put those if we have high confidence it does exist or it ' s true that it does not exist . “ You ’ re dealing with all that information and saying out of that , is it ? Are we confident ? Yes . Are we confident ? No . That estimation uses this same kind of algorithms that AI uses to choose whether to make a right or a left turn , or go straight when it ' s driving the car , and that those techniques are all related . So , the AI is really deep in these systems .”
In talking about the way some corporations or entities don ’ t get the value of inclusion for people with disabilities , Sasha expressed hope that they can come to recognize it ’ s not about a moral or generous thing to do .
SASHA : “ Making , say , airline flights accessible is good business and will increase revenue . And you can actually model those things in a statistical way and say , ‘ Well , there ' s this many disabled people , there ' s this many flights , there ' s , etcetera , … we should just do this .’ And because there are a lot of things that are hidden , because of systemic inequality , a lot of places are not accessible in public transit and in public places . You might not see that many wheelchair users or there might be some disabilities that are invisible . From a pure demographics [ point ], I think a lot of those systems that are trying to optimize for profit may also optimize for accessibility . That might seem like a pipe dream , but I believe that it ' s true . So , as a believer in the power of these intelligent systems to do the rational thing , I ' m hopeful there ' s an upside there .”
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