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.

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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.

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

I have worked in the disability space – as a caregiver, educator and advocate – for four decades.

I have witnessed first hand the economic struggles of people with disabilities, who, according to U.S. Labor statistics, are the most under- and unemployed of all minority groups.

I know that the wealth of cities includes space for diverse people, as well as robust transit to job opportunities for people with a wide range of mobility needs.

More than two years since being victimized in Paris, I remain convinced that ableism and exclusion do more damage to our cities and society than the most hardened criminals.

I firmly believe that in these polarized times, we must embrace environmental justice while addressing systemic exclusion that causes crime.

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

Unable to sleep because of severe concussion symptoms, I wondered how the violent crime would impact me.

Would I, a longtime urban dweller and planner, sour on cities?

Would my progressive politics shift?

No, quite the opposite.

My belief in diversity and how big cities support diverse people is unshaken.

Not that long ago, people who used wheelchairs were barred from mainstream institutions and hauled off to “special” schools.

They had to fight to attend college.

To this day, 34 years after the passage of the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act, less than one percent of housing in the U.S. is accessible to wheelchair users.

Otherwise intelligent people pejoratively label the liberating use of a mobility device as being “confined to a wheelchair.”