Last year, we launched a campaign asking Local Guides like you to add accessibility details about places on the map. Thanks to your contributions, more than 40 million places on Google Maps now have accessibility information—and this is just the beginning!
At Connect Live 2018, Googlers Sasha Blair-Goldensohn, a software engineer on the Local Guides team, and Kyndra LoCoco, an accessibility partner and community programs manager, invited attendees to share their tips on how we can make the map more inclusive for all.
Over on The Keyword (Google’s official blog!), Sasha and Kyndra revealed some of the things they learned about accessibility during the event. They spotlighted amazing contributions and ideas from Local Guides IllankovanThushyantha ( @IlankovanT ), Emeka Ulor ( @EmekaUlor ), and Paul Gerarts ( @Pauleke ).
Check out the full blog post to find out more about their commitment to accessibility, and if you have an idea for making the map more inclusive, share it in the comments below!
@brittym Its a good news about accessibility and our Local heros who are well known for accessibility guides on Maps. @Kamalhasnainee Glad to see you there. @
Thank you @brittym for sharing! I met Sasha in person and I admired his dedication to make this world more accessible to everyone ! And thanks to all the Local Guides who do their best every day to contribute to this!
Thank you @brittym . accessibility is something we all might be concerned of, which also reveals the respect we give to our fellow human beings and to help them navigate with less hassle while encouraging others to do the same. Let’s all join hands to create “A better world for wheels on Google maps”
@brittym Had the opportunity to attend this session on the second day and was blown away. Although I hadn’t selected this session, it proved to be a worthwhile one and really got many of us thinking about how to contribute to accessibility and how this can be improved for users of Maps. Accessibility, as we learned, is much more than what may be directly apparent just through initial observations, and we all must be conscious of that.
P.S. It was such a pleasure meeting Sasha Blair-Goldensohn - a great guy!
I was so glad to get an awesome opportunity.
Through this discussion, I reminded about our region’s accessibilities and now I’m thinking about it deeper than before.
These discussions changed my review approach @brittym where I’m now including accessibility info in each review. Great topic and something needed by a significant percentage of the worlds population.
Accessibility isn’t about wheelchair access but also other different abilities. When I write a review, I try to talk about the noise level for folks who are hard of hearing as well as the width between tables in a restaurant for folks using walkers and canes.
