THRILLED TO TEACH UNIVERSAL DESIGN TO MILLIONS OF REALTORS

HOW TO DETECT ACCESSIBILITY FEATURES IN ANY PROPERTY

My five minute video is online, unlocking the value of Universal Design for millions of viewers.

Viewers learn practical tips for recognizing modifications and opportunities that make a property accessible for people with disabilities.

From doorways and kitchens to bathrooms, pools and parking, my expert insights help REALTORS better serve a broader range of clients.

I spoke at the Florida REALTORS statewide convention last year.

Florida has more REALTORS than any other state -- even more than giant California.

For two decades, I have written cover stories and center spread features for On Common Ground, a smart growth publication of the National Association of Realtors.

Many of my stories have featured groundbreaking Universal Design and wheelchair access insights.

I also crafted a first of its kind, hourlong visual and verbal presentation of Universal Design, Aging in Place and enhancing wheelchair access – for the Ohio REALTORS.

My unmatched Universal Design and Town Planning expertise has been featured in far more than 100 articles, webinars, podcasts, radio/television interviews and books.

https://www.floridarealtors.org/news-media/video-library/learning/how-detect-accessibility-features-any-property

MEET THE WHEELCHAIR USER MAKING GOOGLE MAPS MORE ACCESSIBLE

SASHA BLAIR-GOLDENSOHN

Sasha Blair-Goldensohn points to spoken walking-directions, originally developed for blind/low vision users.

In a big city — with noise, cyclists, traffic, trains, distractions — it’s safer and more efficient for everyone to listen to directional instructions instead of staring into their phones when crossing busy streets.

The feature wasn’t developed for wheelchair users either, but it’s a whole lot easier to keep pushing when a friendly computer voice is telling you where to go instead of having to stop and swipe at your phone every few blocks.

For Blair-Goldensohn, whose work revolves around universal design, it’s hard to understand why you would do things any other way.

To him, working toward a world that can be accessed by everyone, benefits everyone. “Solidarity is powerful,” he says.

 

 

 

MEET THE WHEELCHAIR USER MAKING GOOGLE MAPS MORE ACCESSIBLE

SASHA BLAIR-GOLDENSOHN

Sasha Blair-Goldensohn said that if Google Maps plots and reviews 40 million places around the world, it needs AI to look at trends and other statistics to say, for example, there’s a 96% probability that a place is accessible in its present condition.

Without AI, thousands of people would have to analyze millions of spreadsheets.

The work Blair-Goldensohn is doing is based on his experience as a wheelchair user and is in response to the needs of people with disabilities.

But just like functioning subway elevators also make travel safer for parents pushing strollers, he hopes the accessibility features his team develops can make travel better for a wide range of people.

 

 

MEET THE WHEELCHAIR USER MAKING GOOGLE MAPS MORE ACCESSIBLE

SASHA BLAIR-GOLDENSOHN

To make sure the data that users generate is accurate, Sasha Blair-Goldensohn is reaching back into his AI tool bag.

“AI can be really helpful and in ways that you wouldn’t maybe expect around accessibility, but not always in a gee-whiz, flashy technology way,” he says.

“For instance, we use machine learning to resolve ambiguities based on data.

Like, if there’s a bar where users gave four ‘yeses’ saying it’s accessible, one ‘no,’ but the merchant reports ‘yes,’ what should we do? In order to referee these things in a principled way, we use [machine learning] to determine the probability based on past examples, and if the next three votes are all ‘yes’ — mark it accessible.”

MEET THE WHEELCHAIR USER MAKING GOOGLE MAPS MORE ACCESSIBLE

SASHA BLAIR-GOLDENSOHN

Google Maps relies on its users to provide data on everything from business features to route timing and navigation details.

Ahead of this summer’s Paralympics, Sasha Blair-Goldensohn’s team has been meeting with Paralympic athletes to educate them about the accessibility features on Google Maps and document their experiences using the service in a foreign country.

He says his team wants “to tell the story of Maps and how it makes it easier to get around Paris.

We’re not only talking the track, velodrome and Paralympic venues, but how to get around the city’s bistros, nightclubs, museums.

We want to look at tools for how you plan a visit to an unfamiliar city. We will document it and share it back with Google.”

According to Blair-Goldensohn, the future of accessible mapping will have more details on routes.

Just like Google Maps can toggle to map the journey via car, public transit or on foot, it is evolving to include routes that are 100% wheelchair accessible.

MEET THE WHEELCHAIR USER MAKING GOOGLE MAPS MORE ACCESSIBLE

SASHA BLAIR-GOLDENSOHN

Sasha Blair-Goldensohn praises his employer’s commitment to accessibility.

He said the tech giant’s Accessibility and Disability Inclusion Week has expanded to a whole month.

In 2022, Google opened its Accessibility Discovery Centre in London.

Headed by Chrsitopher Patnoe, the facility is a space where Google’s engineers and developers work alongside people with disabilities to research, develop and test assistive technologies and make existing products more accessible.

It’s also become a hub for other companies and organizations learning how to make their products and services accessible.

Patnoe says 2,700 visitors from outside Google have toured the facility and discussed inclusive design, and Google plans to open six more accessibility centers across Europe.

MEET THE WHEELCHAIR USER MAKING GOOGLE MAPS MORE ACCESSIBLE

SASHA BLAIR-GOLDENSOHN

Working in a place that values inclusion has been a gratifying experience for Sasha Blair-Goldensohn.

He says that during ADI month, Google CEO Sundar Pachai sent out a video companywide, and the accessible-places feature on Maps was the first thing Pachai mentioned.

“I thought, ‘That’s my project, that’s our team — we did it,’ and I was so proud and grateful to be part of something that has input from people around the world,” says Blair-Goldensohn.

MEET THE WHEELCHAIR USER MAKING GOOGLE MAPS MORE ACCESSIBLE

 SASHA BLAIR-GOLDENSOHN

Christopher Patnoe, Google's head of accessibility and disability inclusion in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, appreciates his colleague Sasha Blair-Goldensohn’s genuine commitment.

“Sasha’s desire to change the world comes from his own frustration and a desire to fix it. It’s all about the work to make change, with no pretense,” Patnoe says.

“He’s frustrated that [progress toward inclusion] is too slow — but he never gives up.”

MEET THE WHEELCHAIR USER MAKING GOOGLE MAPS MORE ACCESSIBLE

SASHA BLAIR-GOLDENSOHN

Ever since, Sasha Blair-Goldensohn has been expanding the boundaries of accessibility information displayed in Google Maps.

In 2017, Google released an update allowing users to detail accessibility features of locations they visit.

Maps now shows whether a destination has a wheelchair-accessible entrance, indicated by the ♿ icon, as well as accessible seating, restrooms and parking.

In 2018, Blair-Goldensohn spearheaded an effort to show wheelchair-accessible routes on public transit.

MEET THE WHEELCHAIR USER MAKING GOOGLE MAPS MORE ACCESSIBLE

 SASHA BLAIR-GOLDENSOHN

The amount of data needed to make an accessibility map useful is enormous.

That kind of data takes a major player.

Lucky then, that a software engineer working for Google — which has the No. 1 free mapping-program in the world, with over a billion monthly active users — was blossoming into an accessibility advocate.

When Sasha Blair-Goldensohn returned to work, it quickly became clear that his skillset, position and insights into what information people with disabilities want were a great match.

MEET THE WHEELCHAIR USER MAKING GOOGLE MAPS MORE ACCESSIBLE

 SASHA BLAIR-GOLDENSOHN

The MTA lawsuit was a huge win for accessibility in New York City.

“The great thing about Sasha is his unwavering determination and vision,” says Emily Seelenfreund, DRA’s lead attorney on the case.

“Various folks wanted to settle for less. Sasha knew there could be more.

He didn’t want to settle for pretty good — he wanted to settle for how it should be.”

Over the years, there have been many attempts to create mapping programs detailing the accessibility of the built environment.

All have run into the same problem: scale.

For accessibility information to be useful, it needs to be thorough and widespread.

The amount of data needed to make an accessibility map useful is enormous.

MEET THE WHEELCHAIR USER MAKING GOOGLE MAPS MORE ACCESSIBLE

SASHA BLAIR-GOLDENSOHN

Sasha Blair-Goldensohn stepped up his advocacy by working with legal nonprofit Disability Rights Advocates to bring a class action lawsuit.

He served as one of the plaintiffs alleging violations of the New York City Human Rights Law due to the subway system’s inaccessibility.

It took six years, but in April 2023, a judge approved a final settlement compelling the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to budget for and

“add elevators or ramps to create a stair-free path of travel [in] at least 95% of the system’s currently inaccessible subway stations by 2055.”

 

MEET THE WHEELCHAIR USER MAKING GOOGLE MAPS MORE ACCESSIBLE

SASHA BLAIR-GOLDENSOHN

The gallery of subway wheelchair access failures illustrates how frequent and widespread the problem is.

Inaccessible subways make reliable commuting impossible for disabled New Yorkers and dangerous for many others.

Along with the gallery, Sasha Blair-Goldensohn began writing letters and opinion pieces in New York newspapers, highlighted by a 2017 New York Times opinion piece chronicling his experiences as a disabled commuter and outlining how everyone benefits from better accessibility.

MEET THE WHEELCHAIR USER MAKING GOOGLE MAPS MORE ACCESSIBLE

SASHA BLAIR-GOLDENSOHN

In 2014, he started an online gallery of subway failures and invited other New Yorkers to contribute.

The images show Sasha Blair-Goldensohn and other wheelchair users in front of gated-off elevators, elevators with “out of service” signs, and an amputee climbing a set of stairs while a passerby helps carry his wheelchair.

 They show parents with strollers confronting the same obstacles, older women with canes holding precariously onto escalator handrails, and an incident where the New York police and fire departments had to rescue five preschoolers and their teacher from a broken elevator.

Blair-Goldensohn says the elevator there “breaks constantly.”

It’s at the same station he was headed to when the tree limb fell on him.

 

 

MEET THE WHEELCHAIR USER MAKING GOOGLE MAPS MORE ACCESSIBLE

SASHA BLAIR-GOLDENSOHN

After years as a nondisabled commuter, Sasha Blair-Goldensohn got a firsthand education on an inconvenient truth: that New York City has one of the best subway systems in the U.S., but only if you can navigate stairs.

The idea that one of the world’s richest cities — a center of finance and trade, with more skyscrapers than one can count — couldn’t make its rapid transit system inclusive was so outrageous it spurred Blair-Goldensohn to action.

MEET THE WHEELCHAIR USER MAKING GOOGLE MAPS MORE ACCESSIBLE

 SASHA BLAIR-GOLDENSOHN

Subway elevators were frequently broken down, further limiting mobility and inclusion.

“You are either stuck on the inside or the outside,” says Sasha Blair-Goldensohn.

“In one situation, at least you are on the surface, but you realize there’s no way home because the elevator is shut down for who knows how long.

In the other situation, you are several flights of stairs down and you have to rely on strangers to carry you out.”

MEET THE WHEELCHAIR USER MAKING GOOGLE MAPS MORE ACCESSIBLE

 SASHA BLAIR-GOLDENSOHN

Recovery and rehab was lengthy and full of setbacks, but after a year and a half he was ready to return to work.

His experience was eye-opening.

Sasha Blair-Goldensohn’s Manhattan commute was hampered by a Metropolitan Transportation Authority system that, more than 30 years after passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, still lacked wheelchair access in nearly 75% of commuter train stations.

MEET THE WHEELCHAIR USER MAKING GOOGLE MAPS MORE ACCESSIBLE

 SASHA BLAIR-GOLDENSOHN

“The first project that I worked on when I came here was about how Maps handles reviews,” says Sasha Blair-Goldensohn.

“A restaurant might have 3,000 reviews and want to be able to throw all of them into the AI blender and have it pop out a summary:

 ‘People say this place has great soup dumplings, really long lines and it gets super crowded.’”

Though his work at Google touched on its Maps technology, he wasn’t thinking much about the actual route-finding features — how people get from A to B.

That changed one morning while he was walking through Central Park to catch the subway and a 100-pound tree limb fell on him.

The limb fractured his skull and he sustained a T5 spinal cord injury.

MEET THE WHEELCHAIR USER MAKING GOOGLE MAPS MORE ACCESSIBLE

SASHA BLAIR-GOLDENSOHN

"It’s a basic human right to enter a place like anybody else,” says Sasha Blair-Goldensohn.

This simple ideal can seem maddeningly out of reach for wheelchair users in America’s largest and most expensive metropolis.

But for Blair-Goldensohn, a 48-year-old software engineer and United Spinal member from New York City, it’s the driving force of his life.

In 2009, Blair-Goldensohn lived in Manhattan’s Upper West Side and used the subway on the daily commute to his job at Google’s Chelsea office.

With a doctorate based in artificial intelligence and natural language processing from Columbia University, Blair-Goldensohn was working in AI when it was still a behind-the-scenes tool.

I GOT ROBBED ON THE TRAIN — BUT I STILL HAVE FAITH IN CITIES

I DON’T CONDONE CRIME, BUT I ALSO DO NOT CONDONE THE DEMONIZING OF CITIES AND THE DIVERSE PEOPLE THAT POWER THEM

Perhaps I was a victim of a crime ring that feeds drug habits and worse.

Or maybe my assailants were so pushed aside by society that thievery was a means to feeding family or paying for basic shelter.

I don’t condone crime, but I also do not condone the demonizing of cities and the diverse people that power them.

Cities, warts and all, are historically where our forebears settled, scratched out a living and created a life better for each succeeding generation.

They are the future of a strong and diverse nation.