Designing for participation: What transit and technology can learn from disability advocacy

It's nice to look out into this audience and see a couple of friends with wheelchairs and other assistive devices, and that people took the trouble to come down here on a Wednesday night. So thank you for being here. Actually, I was thinking on the way here, I wanted to start this out a little different than I've done before, which is just to take a moment of shared humanity, that these are troubled times.

The world is on fire, literally in some places, and wars. I've been working at Google now, this is my 20th year, and I really do see us, among others, as being among the horsemen of this coming AI something-apocalypse. I don't know the right portmanteau. But the point being, I'm really proud of the work that we've done, that I've done, that I'm going to talk about today. But none of it is meant to whitewash some of the troubling-plus aspects of AI, of data centers, and a lot of things that I just want y'all to know that I personally, and I'm speaking for myself, but others that I work with there, and a lot of friends I've had over the years, are troubled by these things. And those are real too.

So I just want to say that off the top. I'm glad to talk about it during questions, or after, or any time.

So with that uplifting sentiment , the thing is, we're still here. Thank goodness, it hasn't quite burned down yet. So we're doing some really cool and interesting and fun things with a great team, and it gives me great pride to talk about. And I meant to give... yes. Sasha. I use he/him pronouns. Visual description: I'm a white man, seated in a manual wheelchair.

I have a green T-shirt with "Be The Change" on it, which is a great T-shirt that makes me happy. And there's a butterfly picture on it, because butterflies, I mean, it's a symbol of freedom.

And on this title slide, the title of this talk is My 17 Years on Wheels, and you'll get to hear about how it became 17 years, and subways, maps, hand cycles, and Disability Pride. And the drawing on it is three blocks with visibility, awareness, and access, circling around the accessibility mobile wheelchair icon. And the idea that it's a virtuous cycle, that the more that our community has access, so we're able to, say, take the subway to Spring Street, or Broadway-Lafayette, or wherever, people see us on the subway and they're like, oh, disabled people, they exist.

We should probably make more stuff work for them. And actually, I know this person. And last year, my kid twisted his ankle. Just awareness, awareness, awareness.

And so when we get more visibility, that breeds awareness. And then the next time that restaurant owner is renovating their spot, they're going to be like, I could put in a new pizza oven, but I'm going to build a ramp. Because it's an awareness that this is needed, and that it's not just to feel good. It's not bad business, and these things can work together.

So that's my hope, is that this work, not just my hope, it's what I've seen happen, that this work that we're talking about today, and that I know some of you are all doing, seeds this virtuous cycle, and more things will be more accessible for more disabled people. So yeah, that. And the icons on the side: there's the rainbow Google Maps placemark, the Elevators Are for Everyone logo, I'll talk about what that is, but showing all the different kinds of people that use elevators, not just wheelchairs. Hand cycles. And this down here, these sort of three swooshes, that's the Paralympic logo, for people who don't know.

And we'll talk about that too. Okay. So next slide, please. This is the movie slide.

So let's hear a little bit about my journey in a movie. I'll make sure we've got audio. Hang on. Yeah, we're going to try to play this.

I'll need audio on here. I'll just hold it up to the speaker.

That's not going to work, it's playing through my AirPods. Hold, please, technical difficulties. Should've rehearsed this. No problem.

I've actually had two careers at Google, one before my accident and the other after. I'm Sasha. I work at Google Maps on accessibility and disability inclusion. A really humbling realization I had after my accident is how many people are excluded every day.

And once you're on that side of it, you think, agh! How could I not have known? We're all going to have a disability at some point. It can happen and does happen to people every day.

Maps is not something that we built for only non-disabled people. We wanted it to work for everyone.

76 feet to your next turn. The reason you couldn't do something isn't because of the disability. It's that there was some way that the world has been built, or that Maps has been built. That's a problem that we can fix.

It's not going to make it easy to climb Mount Everest, but to find a wheelchair accessible bar near a dim sum place in Chinatown, that we can do. It's just common sense to make things accessible to all.

So that's the pitch. And it's working. And we're going to talk about how. So next slide, please.

So my story. So how did I come to be in this wheelchair? Well, I was born in New York, where I still live, in '76. Turned 50 in May.

I got a PhD in computer science at Columbia in 2006. And I also had children, so they're now 17 and 19. And I started working at Google. I wasn't a wheelchair user then.

I was not disabled. But I was working on various things, which seemed really interesting. And then in the summer of 2009, so 17 years ago this past summer, I was walking in Central Park, and a giant dead tree limb just happened to fall on top of my head as I was walking beneath it.

That really happened. And it's still hard to believe.

But after that instant of the most horrendous luck one can imagine, I had many more moments of exceedingly good luck, to be sitting here and to be able to talk to all of you, and for my kids to still have a father, and for all these things that followed.

And it brought me into this world of disability, which, surprise, surprise, already existed. There were already disabled people who had been working and doing and going to school and playing parasport and fighting for their rights, which were actually my rights, which are actually all of our rights, long before that. And I'm so grateful for it. And it became time over the years for me to join that fight and that work.

And that's what we'll talk about, is the stuff I've gotten to be part of since then, and some things I started, some things I joined. So I got into subway activism and advocacy, which we'll talk about. I became the lead of Google Maps accessibility and disability innovation. So how to take the things Maps does, air quotes, "for everyone," and make them actually work for disabled people and more.

And I started writing about it. I had a few op-eds, and things where I was trying to spread the word, and did spread the word. And I also got involved in adapted sports. So some of these photos on the bottom are from adapted sports events.

I played wheelchair tennis for a while. I did a few New York marathons in my hand cycle with the Achilles International Club. And this one on the right is myself on the right. In the center is Arslan, who is on my Google team and is a wheelchair user and a power soccer beast.

But if you don't know about power soccer, get in one of those chairs. But be careful, because it is... wow. My head is still...

yeah. Wow. And you know who's really gutsy? Sage, on the left, with the white cane, who is a low vision person.

And Sage took a shot at getting in one of those wheelchairs. That was really gutsy. Yeah. And on the top right, that image is me and my Elevator Action Group, my activist friends, some of whom were already in the activism world, as I said, who we joined together to demand that the MTA make the subways accessible to everyone.

We'll talk about how we've made some real progress. And that's us outside the courthouse. And on the bottom right is one of the Google Maps features that now exists, thanks to our team, which is when you look up any place in the world, you can now find out: if you see the icon, that means it is a wheelchair accessible entrance. If the icon has a strikethrough, that means it's known to not be an accessible entrance.

And then when you click through, there's even more information. Next slide, please. So before I go further, this is an important foundational note, which is this work, certainly the Google Maps work, we did not do ourselves. And as I said, it builds on decades or more of disability rights victories.

But some highlights were, if anyone has seen Crip Camp, the passing of 504. Indeed, deserves a round of applause for 504. ADA before ADA, ADA for government buildings, more or less. And that was '73.

And then in 1990, the full ADA. So massive shoutout, rest in power to Judy Heumann.

And then the general concept of the curb cut effect, that when you build things for a vulnerable or disadvantaged community, it often ends up helping many more people. Which in hindsight, it's like, of course it does. So if you build those ramps at the corners, wheelchairs use them. We use them, but not only us.

It's the wheeled luggage, the strollers, et cetera. But what else are, what are additional curb cuts? Captions. Yes, legislated and necessary for people that are deaf and hard of hearing, but also good in a noisy bar.

Also good if someone has an accent you can't parse out. Also good for someone learning a language. So these are all virtual curb cuts. And there are so many more.

So okay. Next slide, please. I think there might be a... yes.

And elevators, also curb cuts. So who is crowding in the elevator with me and Liam on the subway? It's not usually other wheelchairs. Who is usually crowding in there with us?

People with strollers. Luggage. Bikes. Bikes.

The delivery bikes. My side hustle idea: can we get Grubhub to sponsor those elevators? I'm actually not totally kidding. Because those delivery workers, they work hard!

And those bikes are heavy, those e-bikes. So I mean... all right. We'll work on that.

Because that's who needs it. And it enables... anyway, curb cuts. So next slide, please.

And shoutout to Angela Glover Blackwell. If you haven't read it, read the original Curb Cut Effect paper that she published in Stanford Social Innovation Review. There's more to it than just the one-sentence thing, and the history of it is really... it's brilliant stuff.

And she's a really cool person. She has a podcast that I was on. And she's... anyway, Angela Glover Blackwell.

Shoutout. Next slide. So subways. I grew up here in the city.

And I thought, oh, the subway is great. Only $1.25 or 90 cents or whatever it was, way back when, for a token, back when tokens were tokens. Anyone can take it any time, 24 hours a day. Nope!

It's humbling to realize. I thought, yeah, the strollers. Sometimes you have to help someone with a stroller up and down the stairs. Kind of a pain.

Tough for them. But the fact of wheelchair users was out of sight, out of mind for me. And you come to realize... you don't...

sorry? Oh, there was a video... oh. Anyway, that's...

no sweat. We can... yeah. So in the video, I think that video might be a picture of us outside the courthouse, demonstrating and saying, "Fight, fight, fight.

Make the subways accessible." Which is what we did. Because in that timeline, which I can't quite read from here... Oh, so why did I get this started?

Because I went to Boston around 2012, a few years after starting to learn how to get around by wheelchair, and a friend said, "Come meet me at Harvard Yard. You can take the T, their subway." I said, "Did you forget? I'm in a chair."

She said, "No, I think most of the stations have elevators." And I went down to Kendall Square, to the station. They had an elevator that worked. So I asked the attendant, "Do they all have...?"

"Yeah, they actually do." How could this... it felt like rocket science. And it is so not rocket science.

It's elevator science and ramp science. And we have the technology. So by the time I got back to New York, I'm like, what the fuck?! How did we...

what... And so I started looking around, and I was researching it, and I ended up getting in touch with Disability Rights Advocates. And if people don't know them, they are in some ways like the enforcement arm of ADA, which, ADA, for all its power, doesn't have an enforcement agency. And DRA is this giant, not really big enough, but a firm that's been around in Berkeley, the crucible of the independent living movement, for almost as long as ADA.

And they brought these big class actions, which, they never asked for a dollar. They're not getting money out of it. The solution, the settlement for these cases, is a plan. That's it.

A legally binding plan, that the city, that the company, that whoever has to do in order to get into compliance and to make themselves accessible. And so that's what we did. Oh, and here we go. So this shows us outside the MTA headquarters in this video.

And so this is, I think, over the course of months, when we were there every single month, to remind them: we're still here! You've got to settle this case! This ain't over! This ain't over!

So that was March. This is April. This is May. And we're there every month.

We have our banner. Oh, and we're going to be marching with that banner on Sunday at the Disability Pride Parade, this coming Sunday. So yeah, please! As I recall, it goes from Madison Square down to Union Square.

It's a very low-speed, chill march. It's a fun crowd. I recommend it. So yeah, so this is us again.

Rain or shine, that's us out there. Many friends, many signs. And we waited, and we were patient. And ultimately, they realized we weren't going to go away.

We actually disrupted a meeting. That was a lot of fun. So we got kicked out. And this is a different thing of us in front.

So we had sort of two strategies. We would be outside in front of MTA headquarters when they had their monthly board meeting, and we also would get out in front of the courthouse, when there was going to be a hearing inside, to say this isn't only happening inside. We need it to be outside in the street, where people can know about it. And we would call in, send out a press release, and get Channel 2 News, or the Daily News, or, what do they call it, AM New York, that they hand out on the subway, and get people to come out and cover it.

And people did. And ultimately, MTA, they were getting their asses kicked in the courtroom. And with the city, the city's air quotes "regular counsel," they hired then the most expensive lawyers they could, which is Paul, Weiss, a very expensive private firm, partners for thousands of dollars an hour, to try to defend what is totally indefensible and completely broke the law. And they got their asses kicked in the courtroom too.

And so ultimately, they had to settle the case. And so when we started out... go back one, to that graph. So when we started out, it was actually 20%.

This is what it is now. It's at 30%. And these are the other cities. And it's just bananas.

It's not like those other cities have a special kind of elevator. To be honest, New York has it easier than many cities, because we use cut-and-cover construction, which is to say, often you can see the platform from the street, because it's that shallow. So the amount of vertical distance that has to be covered is actually smaller. So it's, I mean, I don't know how to build an elevator, and I've never done it, and they ultimately have to do it.

But it just defies credulity to say it's too expensive. Because ultimately, we're already paying the cost. That's what I say at a lot of these things. How are we already paying the cost?

Well, we don't see who's not there. So there's the lost productivity. There's the tourists who don't come. There's the young families who don't stay.

There's the older adults who don't retire here, because it's too hard! And that's lost. And then there's the money that we're actually affirmatively spending on paratransit, which is to say Access-A-Ride. And I've been to wheelchair basketball games with 10 Access-A-Ride vans outside.

And these are the most fit, mobile people you can imagine in their chairs, but they have to take Access-A-Ride and call a day ahead to make the booking, because they can't take the subway and go with their friends. Which is the worst kind of separate but equal solution. There's nothing equal about it. So we can do better.

And that's what they found in court. So next slide, please. So maybe next slide? Oh, yeah.

So what's the progress? So that's a lot of talk. What have we done? So we settled the construction case, where they had to sort of force them to make a legally binding plan, to make... so yeah, this is the video again of us outside.

But so, basically, before this, they were doing three or four elevators a year, which was something like 1% of the system every year. But some years, they didn't do it, if the budget wasn't good, da da da. Now they're required to do more or less 12 every year. So it tripled the rate. But it's locked in. They have to do it every single year.

And so from when we started, we were at 20%. Now we're at 30% and growing. And for instance, I took the subway here today, from 14th to Spring Street. It's only on the downtown platform so far at Spring Street, which is not ideal, but they're doing it.

And the thing is, now we don't have to try to argue with them, do this one, do that one. They do it at their... it's locked in. They're doing it, doing it, doing it.

And the case that was until very recently still pending was the maintenance case. So that's a separate case, where under the law that forced them to build it in every station, was a state law, I'm sorry, is a city law, New York City Human Rights Law. The law that requires the elevators to work, yes, that's a separate thing. It's ADA.

So ADA doesn't say you have to build it in every station, because of reasonable accommodation provisions. But ADA does come through for you for saying, wherever there are elevators, they have to be reliable. And so that's the maintenance case. And that was still pending when I first put this slide together. But what I wrote here is "pending settlement."

So it hasn't quite been fully, fully announced, but it's been semi-announced. And the settlement: there's not a reliability guarantee, which we sought, and we weren't able to get.

But they can't hide it when it's broken. So they have to tell people when it's out of service, and they have to be transparent about it. And it will let people make other plans, basically. So we've had the experience where you show up at a station and the elevator's broken.

What?! Nobody... why didn't they tell me? Why aren't they announcing this? If that station was shut for the day for everyone else, they would have announced it.

But they don't announce it. And now they are required to do that. And not only at the station, but on the train, on the way there, when you get on the train. So, to raise awareness and visibility of this, which is a powerful and important thing.

And you can't hide from this. So that's a link. Okay. And there are other ones.

But next slide.

And this shows we have a good time out there, which is July 26, 2025. I don't know, were any of you... were you at that, Xian? This is on... okay.

It's the kind of event that Xian would be at. And all these people, where we had a thousand people. We took Thompson Street, I think, going up from... I'm not a fan of walking in crowds.

Yeah, good one to skip, then, because this was a big crowd. We had a big banner. I think that's Jumaane Williams in the front, who is holding the banner for a while, who is our Public Advocate, and someone who lives with Tourette's, and talks about accessibility all the time. And that's another banner that we'll have at the Disability Pride March.

And we'd like to do this at the next ADA anniversary too. Okay. Next slide, please.

That was subways. And where are we on time?

You have about 17 minutes. Okay. All right, good. So that was the subways.

Now, what about the maps? What's been the journey in Maps? Well, when I came back to Maps after my accident, in 2011, what we had was compliance, which is basically WCAG, which I think many of you are familiar with. How ADA has been interpreted to apply for online entities.

So what does it mean for a website to be, air quotes, "accessible"? Anything that that website has, you have to be able to see and do and use with a screen reader. It has to be touch targets, kind of stuff.

But something that isn't in there is, does it work? Is it useful to disabled people? So at that time, there was nothing on there saying, is this restaurant wheelchair accessible? Does it have a wheelchair accessible bathroom?

You can get subway directions that say exactly when the train comes. But is that an accessible station? Eh. Who knows?

WCAG, that gets 100% thumbs up, flying colors, pass from WCAG, because it's equal. It's not offering that to some people but not others. And its air quotes "defense" is, we don't have the data. If we had it, we would love to show it, but we don't have it.

Which is true, so far as it goes. And I think the technical term would be "utter bullshit."

Because seriously?! We can take satellite photos and do Street View and all this stuff, and we can't get that? Of course we could get it. But it was never prioritized.

And there were none of us in the room. And it was very humbling to realize I was there before, and I wasn't raising anything about it, because I didn't know. So no shade on people who don't know. But once you know, what are you going to do about it?

And so that became my mission. And I was able to pull in other people and find allies. And that's what we did. So we had to get the data.

So to go from equality, that everyone gets the same thing. So this picture, if we give everyone the same bike, on the top row, it might work for some people. But for the wheelchair user, that same bike isn't very useful. For the tall person, for the small person, not very useful.

No. Let's give everyone the bike they need to do the thing. So let's give everyone the Maps that work for us, for them, to get to a restaurant that's going to work for you. It's the same for us to know that the restaurant is going to be closed when you get there.

If it has a big flight of stairs out front, that's not very useful. The restaurant is not going to be happy about it either, if you show up with your family. That's bad for them too. They would rather people know.

So we started this Project Curb Cut. These are some of my allies that I mentioned before. Not my allies: my colleagues, my comrades in this work.

Yeah, that's what we did. Power of representation. When you get people in the room who actually live with different disabilities and talk about what we need and how this should work. Okay? Next slide, please.

By the way, I realized I said 17 minutes. That's inclusive of Q&A. Oh, thank you. Yes. Sorry.

No, thanks. I was like, yeah, I knew I had been sort of going on. So I appreciate that. So what has been the progress in Maps?

Our Local Guides worldwide have given us a ton of information about individual places, but also merchants, and also imagery, that we process all of that through the machine learning blender, as we think of it, as I think of it. Which is: you throw all the data in there, and out of that comes, are these places accessible or not? And we now have 50 million global places where we have known accessibility data.

Impressive number. What does it mean? In the States, it means 8 out of 10 places you see on Maps, we have accurate, up-to-date information of: is that place accessible or not? Does it have a wheelchair accessible bathroom, parking, or seating?

Does it have a hearing loop? And in most larger countries, tier one countries, as we call them, more like 70%. But even outside those tiers, we're at 60%, and always above 50%. So when I went to Mexico City with my family, it wasn't hard to find an accessible place.

And places that have less accessibility in general, that's even more valuable. So we did that. And then, as far as navigation goes, having step-free transit and walking directions, and also having detailed voice guidance, which, when you're in walking mode, speaks the directions out loud. So very important for someone who is blind or low vision, to speak those directions as you're walking and give you more detail.

But also useful for me. Curb cut for me, when I'm in my chair. I can't be holding my phone and pushing. So I'll put it on that, and it'll say, "100 more feet.

50 more feet. Next corner, make a left." So these things help everyone. Okay. I'm going to go... next slide.

I think... yes. So coverage in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

There are places that don't have it, like Old Town Tavern, and they get dropped off the list. Next slide, please. And it's worldwide. So you can look it up in Santiago, Chile, or wherever you might happen to be.

The coverage is there. Next slide, please.

Next slide. Thanks. Who needs ADI-equitable maps? A growing percentage, a growing proportion of the population.

So this is the business-forward slide. It's not just a good look. It's great business. And so I try to show this when we get the, oh, can we pay for it?

Yes, we can. The percentages are going up super quickly. And this is: do it now, or you will be left in the dust by the competition. As a maker of software, but also as a car manufacturer, also as a hotel chain.

Okay? Next slide, please. And this has been my journey in wheelchair accessible sport. Meeting friends, meeting allies, being mentored by Bill on the bottom there in wheelchair tennis, being a mentor to Said on the right.

Next slide, please. And finally, next slide, actually. Yeah. Let's get to... yes.

What can you do? This is a community that knows people who know about accessibility. And yet I like to go down this list, because it's things that hopefully is new to some of you. That community is powerful.

I think we all know that. But joining these groups, like the Elevator Action Group: if you go to this link, you can sign up for our group, find out when we're having our next protest and rally. And we do a lot of stuff. And we have a good time.

And they're part of this bigger Rise and Resist group, which also are activists. We are also activists for climate justice, for immigrant justice, for LGBTQ justice, for, you name it. So we'll be outside of the ICE detention center tomorrow at noon. So if that's something that's important to you, I think it's pretty important.

And then there's these adaptive sports groups, like Achilles International, which is nationwide. It started in New York. There's Lakeshore in Birmingham, a great place, BORP in the Bay Area, this one in Seattle. And the Paralympics are amazing.

And they're coming, as I said, to LA. So finally, as Rise and Resist likes to say in our mission statement, do it with all the joy we can muster, and have a good time with it. Okay. And I think one more, I think, which is...

I was going to say, can we read the link out? Oh, sorry, yes. Thank you. The link is bit.ly/E4E-NYC.

bit.ly/E4E-NYC is the Elevator Action Group's page. And you can sign up there for our mailing list. And we will also post the slides in the Slack group afterwards, so you can click on anything that's linked as well.

And I think I just have one more slide, which is... oh, this is thank you. But is there an updates... oh, yeah.

So updates. Breaking news. We just opened at our campus over in Chelsea the Accessibility Discovery Center. So this is the New York version of the thing that I know a few of you here have actually visited in London, that opened in 2022.

That's the London blog post. We're working on our blog post for this one, to really get the word out. And since 2022, they've opened them in five more EMEA, Europe, Middle East, and Africa, offices. But this is the first one in the States.

So it's a big deal. And it's also...

woo! Yes, yes, yes. And it's the first one to be at ground level, which is to say, facing the street, which is to say, you can know about it, and people will know about it, whether or not they had an invitation to come in yet. And so it's a way to both let people know and, frankly, to force the higher-ups within Google to be proud of it.

And they are, and they should be. But also to make them invested in it, make it not suck. Because if it was just in some back room where nobody went to, it could sort of get mothballed and forgotten about. But if it's in the front window, it's both an opportunity and a challenge to us as the people who run it, to Google executives, to see, this is a thing.

People care about it. And it's, again, not just a good look, but great business. So that's the Accessibility Center. And some really cool external events happening.

There's TravelAbility. It's travelability.net, kind of how it sounds. An annual conference for travel and accessibility. This is the fifth year I think I'll be going.

And I definitely recommend looking into it. I'll leave it there. And there's the ACM ASSETS conference that's happening in Portugal in a couple weeks. And I get to go there, lucky me.

I'm giving a talk about the Maps accessibility stuff we do. And those links will be in there when we give out the slides. Okay. That's it.

Oh, no. This is just extra information for... yeah. This...

yeah. Okay. Now, Q&A. Yes.

Good. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Sasha. We got a comment online that you need to write a book. Ah. Working on it.

Oh! Working on it! So that's great. All right, so thank you so much.

We're going to take questions in the room right now. Anyone have a question for Sasha? All right, Larry. Hey, Sasha.

Did that settlement with the MTA say that by 2050, all the stations are supposed to be accessible? Second question: is it true that it looks like the New York bus system is very accessible? I ride the buses a lot. It seems like they're doing okay.

So, Larry, the settlement is a schedule. So it's a binding legal agreement for a schedule. And it was every 10 years they have to do a certain number. And by... so starting in 2025, every 10 years.

By 2055, it's 95%. And at the time, they said these 5% are impossible to make accessible. Again, I think we talked before about the technical term for these arguments. But 95% would be great.

But yeah, it gave them a pace to do it. The bus system, good question. Every bus in the MTA fleet has the fold-down ramp in the front. So they are wheelchair accessible.

However... There are two spots. There are two spots in the front of the bus that you can... there are two spots for a wheelchair.

And as I'm sure some of our wheelchair friends in the audience have had the experience of: "Sorry. I got two chairs already. Next bus."

Hm. Not ideal.

Especially as I went to Boston, and I found out they did it. I've gone to other cities. Guess what they do? They have a section in the back of the bus, which is a wide open section. There's no seats in it.

And you arrange yourself. You don't have to do this whole choreography where they stop the bus, everyone out at the front, the bus driver has to get up. No. They stick the little ramp out onto the pavement, you get on, you arrange yourself, and they help you out if you need it.

And there's not only room for two chairs. So you can do it differently. So what I'm trying to say is every bus is technically accessible, but it's not the best way to do it. And there are other buses out there, and there are other ways to do it.

So I think they could do even better.

So as a Canadian, I would be curious: how are things with the new... well, the current administration? Have they gone worse? I mean, we hear all about, and we see it. I work for a multinational company, and we see the rollback on DEI.

But I'm curious, in terms of physical accessibility, are state governments also rolling back? Just curious. I too am curious. And yeah, I think accessibility is a funny category, in the sense that it's not just, you can argue...

it's inarguable that it's not the case that anyone can become disabled in an instant, any day. And that, as I've learned from John Kemp, one of my great mentors in this space, major shoutout, 80% of disabilities are acquired. So four out of five of us... Between 18 and 64.

80%. Yeah. You will become... it will be acquired as an adult.

And so it's not if you have, it's when you have a disability, you will realize, oh, this was for me, that this work was happening. And I think people, regardless of where they are on the spectrum, know somebody. So I think because of that, sometimes it gets a "pass." I'm using the air quotes.

So it's less sidelined as being only a priority for those people, because it's everyone. So I think that helps. That said, things like ERGs at companies, their budgets have been ruthlessly slashed. And so there has been some blood on the floor in those departments, that people are getting canned, and that any work that's not very strictly clear business priority has been harder to advocate for.

We've got a comment from online. We have someone from Barcelona online, just commenting: same problem as New York with the buses. It's hell when it's crowded and someone with a wheelchair has to get on. That is for sure.

And massive... I want to take another question, but big shoutout, Barcelona. Because I actually didn't get to go to Barcelona, but I went to Vitoria-Gasteiz in El País Vasco, in the Basque region, and to San Sebastián on the coast, and I saw two amazing things in both of those cities that you don't know 'til you know. In Vitoria-Gasteiz, old medieval city, lots of cobblestones.

I thought, oh, shit. This is going to suck in my wheelchair. No! They had put sealed concrete over the top.

So they had beautiful-looking squares where you could see the cobblestones, yet they were smooth. So you didn't need to choose. And people say, oh, we could pave it over, we could make it all black asphalt, but it won't look as scenic, so you have to choose. No, you can do both.

And they did, and it was awesome. So A, that. And B, when I went to San Sebastián on the beach, I wanted to go to the beach, but my wheelchair, the sand... No. They had massive Mobi-mats over huge sections of the beach.

And everybody was using them. Because guess what? The coolers, the strollers, da da da. And so I went down to the beach like everybody else.

Wait, you can just do this?

We have them in some little sections of some of our beaches. That's great. But it could be a big piece of the beach. So hey, Far Rockaway, hey, Jones Beach, hey, every other beach, we can do these things.

Sí se puede. How global. All right. One last question here in the room.

I'll take yours. Would you feel, if the city would compensate every person with mobility issues to have a car whenever they want, 24/7, would you still feel that the buses and the trains should be accessible as well? This is such a good question. And yes, yes, a thousand times yes. They should be.

They must be. Because what about... even if... so separate but equal never works.

Let's be clear about that. Oh, we have a special system for you. That means it's not going to be the same. It's not going to be as good.

But regardless, it's going to be different. But it also means that kid doesn't get to go with their class. And it's also a loss for the class, because the class doesn't see the disabled people. And they don't get to know those people are just like me.

Or they don't get to... you're not in it together. And so when there's an issue on the train, when somebody spilled soda on the floor and it was a whole thing, lucky for the disabled kid, he got to be part of that story. He's kind of in the game.

And whenever the class is late because of that, he's in it too. And he didn't get there... So it's really about, as much as possible, having one system. Where it's not possible, I'm really glad to have that car available, and recognizing that.

And there's a tactical and a strategic. And the perfect will not be... not letting it be the enemy of the good. So sometimes an accessible vehicle is the best solution.

So to make that available when that's the best we can do. But as much as possible, aim for one system that works for everybody. Because you get these curb cuts that you don't always anticipate. When you made it work for that one person with the wheelchair, when you had announcements for the people who are blind and low vision, when you had the captions for somebody who is deaf, it helped so many more people.

And so if you try to do these one-off solutions, it doesn't tend to work out too well. I've got a softball for you, which I think you're going to appreciate. We've got to wrap. Can you just tell us a little bit about the Discovery Center, though, a little more?

And then... Yes. The Discovery Center is a place that...

I'm going to send out to this mailing list a thing about the Discovery Center. And it's going to show, among other things, how everyone can sign up and apply to come in, to hear about what we do, but also tell us what you do. And how the technology we're building, hopefully it's good. Hopefully you'll find some uses for it.

And everyone learns something there. I learn stuff there all the time. But you can tell us what your organization, what your disability, what you want from it, and we can work together there. So that, I can promise, will be coming out.

And so that's on the 8th Avenue side of the building. On the 9th Avenue side is the Google Store, which does have security, does have open doors. Anyone can walk in any time. And just yesterday I had lunch with one of the managers there, and we're planning how we're going to have the highlights of the ADC in the store.

So you don't have to wait until you get an invitation to come in and see the real details. To put that in the store and say, here's what we're working on in the Accessibility Center. And to get that out to everybody who didn't even think they were coming for an accessibility tour, but they came to get their Pixel phone fixed. And they'll be like, oh, accessibility.

That's kind of cool. So both of those things. Yay! I know you've been working on it for years.

Yeah. Needs more of a plug. Thank you so much, Sasha. So cool.