Jon Froehlich

I used to❤️Twitter as a place to genuinely connect & learn from others. It's not that place anymore. I uninstalled Twitter in April'22 & have decreasingly used it. Other platforms haven't worked as a replacement; hoping Bluesky will be diff. Join me here: bsky.app/profile/jonfro…

🚀 Excited to share that our paper “CapNav: Benchmarking Vision Language Models on Capability-conditioned Indoor Navigation” has been accepted to #CVPR2026 (main track)! 📄: arxiv.org/abs/2602.18424 💻GitHub: github.com/makeabilitylab… 🤗Hugging Face: huggingface.co/datasets/Richa… (1/4)

StreetReaderAI leverages context-aware AI to solve a critical accessibility barrier, making immersive street-level imagery interpretable by screen readers. This work is the path to fully inclusive digital exploration.

Delighted that our work is being featured. This was an incredible team effort by a set of hugely talented, passionate Googlers: @shaunkane, @AlexFiannaca, Victor Tsaran, Nimer Jaber, & Phil Nelson. An accessible street view has enormous potential for blind travel planning and O&M

Interested in learning more? See: 📄UIST'25 preprint: makeabilitylab.cs.washington.edu/media/publicat… 📽️UIST'25 video: youtu.be/Xg7_pwD419g 🚀Project page: makeabilitylab.cs.washington.edu/project/street…

On a personal level, this project was like a sabbatical dream 🦄, I got to reunite with @shaunkane (we first worked together in 2006), collaborate with some incredible Googlers like Alex Fiannaca, Nimer Jaber, & Victor Tsaran, and even write (lots of) code in Google's monorepo 🧑🏽‍💻

I have had the incredible privilege to sabbatical at Google Research. What have I been up to? Attempting to make Street View accessible to all! 🌍✨ StreetViewAI is a new, accessible street view prototype using context-aware AI & voice interaction. youtu.be/wY_2vfDikkQ

We're launching RampNet, an open-source AI that helps detect curb ramps with near-human accuracy. The most amazing part? The entire project was conceived of and led by high school student John O'Meara. 🧵 A thread on what we built and why it matters.

📢We've completely redesigned our API pages! It's never been easier to: ✔️ Download data in CSV, GeoJSON, or Shapefiles. ✔️ Access data programmatically through our revised API. ✔️ Build tools that champion accessibility & improve urban mobility. sidewalk-chicago.cs.washington.edu/api

@JesseDoesHCI @ProfJayFo Congrats @JesseDoesHCI! 🎉Thanks for leading the way on such an important topic 🙌🏽

This is for my CHI ‘24 paper with @ProfJayFo & @jonfroehlich, “Playing on Hard Mode: Accessibility, Difficulty and Joy in Video Game Adoption for Gamers with Disabilities”, available at dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/36… And the full list of GAConf Award finalists: gaconf.com/gaconf-awards-…

So honored & delighted to be a finalist for Best Academic Research in this year’s Game Accessibility Conference Awards! And to be nominated alongside these juggernauts of game a11y research… wow!! 🤩🥳 Love that I can contribute to such a fantastic research community!

Today, we kick off hashtag#ASSETS2024 in beautiful St. John's, Newfoundland. Would love to meet up with you if you're also here!

Can your robot vacuum do this? Researchers in @UW @uwengineering #UWAllen’s @makeabilitylab adapted one to create MobiPrint, a 3D printer on wheels that maps a room and prints objects on location, on demand based on a user's needs. #UWinnovates #NSFfunded washington.edu/news/2024/10/2…

Thrilled to be heading to #ASSETS24 to present “Engaging with Children’s Artwork in Mixed Visual-Ability Settings”, done with my wonderful collaborators and advisors @wobbrockjo and @jonfroehlich! I will be presenting on Mon, Oct 28 as a part of Session 1A: Creativity 🖼️🎨 (1/7)

Chu Li is a fantastic, multi-talented PhD student seeking an internship for Summer'25. She will level-up any group that she joins. See: chu-li.me

One step towards this future is Chu Li's (@Chimichurrichu) new VIS'24 tool AltGeoViz, which attempts to provide interactive high-level spatial analytic summaries verbally via screenreader I/O controls. makeabilitylab.cs.washington.edu/projects/altge…

For the last decade+, my group has developed new interactive tools to advance understanding of the accessibility of the physical world for people with disabilities—projects like AccessScore, AccessVis, and Sidewalk Equity.