UW CREATE

mobility


November 8, 2023

Off to the Park: A Geospatial Investigation of Adapted Ride-on Car Usage

November 7, 2023 Adapted ride-on cars (ROC) are an affordable, power mobility training tool for young children with disabilities. But weather and adequate drive space create barriers to families’ adoption of their ROC.  CREATE Ph.D. student Mia E. Hoffman is the lead author on a paper that investigates the relationship between the built environment and…


October 27, 2023

Augmented Reality to Support Accessibility

October 25, 2023 RASSAR – Room Accessibility and Safety Scan in Augmented Reality – is a novel smartphone-based prototype for semi-automatically identifying, categorizing, and localizing indoor accessibility and safety issues. With RASSAR, the user holds out their phone and scans a space. The tool uses LiDAR and camera data, real-time machine learning, and AR to…


November 30, 2022

UnlockedMaps provides real-time accessibility info for rail transit users

screenshot of UnlockedMaps in New York. Stations that are labeled green are accessible while stations that are labeled orange are not accessible. Yellow stations have elevator outages reported.

Congratulations to CREATE Ph.D. student Ather Sharif, Orson (Xuhai) Xu, and team for this great project on transit access! Together they developed UnlockedMaps, a web-based map that allows users to see in real time how accessible rail transit stations are in six metro areas including Seattle, Philadelphia (where the project was first conceived by Sharif and a friend…


November 8, 2022

A Ph.D. Student’s Promising Research in Mobility in Cerebral Palsy

Researcher Alyssa Spomer uses a tablet to monitor a man wearing a robotic exoskeleton device around his hips and legs and walking on a treadmill.

Whether she’s researching how biofeedback systems can guide gait training in children with cerebral palsy or leading toy adaptation events, Alyssa Spomer is committed to advancing accessible technology. A Ph.D. student in UW Mechanical Engineering (ME) and advised by CREATE Associate Director Kat Steele, Spomer is the student chair of CREATE-sponsored HuskyADAPT. Her studies have been multidisciplinary,…


August 7, 2022

CREATE becomes a principal sponsor of HuskyADAPT

CREATE is pleased to be a financial and advisory sponsor of HuskyADAPT, an interdisciplinary community that is dedicated to improving the availability of accessible technology in Washington and fostering conversations about the importance of accessible design.  HuskyADAPT is led by a team of UW students and six faculty advisors, including CREATE directors Kat Steele, Heather Feldner, Anat Caspi and Jennifer Mankoff….


November 17, 2021

Feldner and Steele’s ‘Reimagining Mobility’ series featured in The Daily

Collaboration and diverse perspectives and approaches are at the heart of CREATE’s mission to make technology accessible and make the world accessible though technology. One program developed by CREATE faculty looks at mobility solutions and ways to eliminate barriers. Hosted by CREATE associate directors Kat Steele and Heather Feldner, the Reimagining Mobility Conversation Hub brings…


September 14, 2021

Reimagining Mobility: Inclusive Architecture

On October 13, 2021 Karen Braitmayer shared images from her experience of— and critical goals for— inclusive architecture. Noting that the best and brightest designers might come in bodies that are different than employers expect, she called for design schools to welcome students with disabilities and for design firms to hire and support the careers…


April 7, 2021

Reimagining Mobility: Inclusive Living and Home Design

Barry Long is an advocate for people with disabilities who is helping to make real estate more accessible. Watch our third Conversation Hub session, where Long shares past challenges and future improvements in inclusive, visitable homes.


July 23, 2020

Can Project Sidewalk Use Crowdsourcing to Help Seattleites Get Around?

July 23, 2019 | SeattleMet With the goal of making navigating our streets safer and easier for the mobility impaired, Jon Froehlich’s Project Sidewalk turns mapping sidewalks and improving pedestrian accessibility into a virtual game. To complete missions, users “walk” through city streets via Google Street View, labeling and rating the quality of sidewalks and…