Makeability Lab

Please follow us on Bluesky: bsky.app/profile/makeab… and on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/makeab…

🚀 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)

We are recruiting new PhD students this year in: 🌆 Urban Computing / GeoAI: Building accessible, intelligent cities 🥽 AR: Enhancing human capabilities 🎨 Creativity Support Tools: AI-powered imagination systems Deadline: Dec 15, 2025 More: jonfroehlich.github.io

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

@GromitC Thank you! Code here: github.com/makeabilitylab…

Best research lab website I've ever seen: makeabilitylab.cs.washington.edu

📢 Huge milestone reached! Project Sidewalk now has over **ONE MILLION** sidewalk accessibility labels (1,163,413 labels to be exact) across 21,368 km of city streets. 🎉🥳🎈🎊

Excited, honored, and humbled to receive the #ASSETS24 Best Paper award for our work, “Engaging with Children’s Artwork in Mixed Visual-Ability Families”! Huge shoutout to my wonderful advisors, @wobbrockjo and @jonfroehlich. Check out the full paper at: doi.org/10.1145/366354…

(3) Daniel Campos Zamora research with @liang_fab_akira on how digital fabrication technologies such as 3D printing, CNC milling, vacuum forming, and heat transfer melting can enable the production of custom tactile surface indicators (TSIs): dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/36…

(2) A new dataset & benchmarks for classifying 33 sidewalk accessibility problems using deep learning: github.com/ProjectSidewal…. This work was co-led by two @uwcse undergraduate students Xinlei Liu & Kevin Wu with mentorship from @hoominchu, @chimichurrichu & @cpencils.

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…

Congrats to Makeability Lab PhD student @jaewook_jae & collaborators on our Best Paper Award for ARSports at the ISMAR'24 workshop IDEATExR. Jae is on a roll, coming off a "Best Paper Inclusion Award" at UIST'24 two weeks ago! makeabilitylab.cs.washington.edu/media/publicat…

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)

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.

Excited to present this work at VIS'24!🙌 Join me tomorrow (Oct 17th) at 12pm EST in the "Analytics and Applications" session to learn how screen-reader users can interact with dynamic geovisualizations.🤓 @ieeevis #Accessibility #Visualization

And then PhD student @jaewook_jae will present our joint work w/Prof @YuhangZhao1 & @YapengTian on the award-winning CookAR, head-mounted AR with real-time object affordance augmentations for kitchen tools. Talk is: 3:35-4:35PM in Allegheny 2. makeabilitylab.cs.washington.edu/projects/cooka…

On this last day of #UIST2024, PhD student @XiaSu09 will be presenting our joint work w/Chang Xiao and Eunyee Koh at Adobe Research on SonifyAR, which uses LLMs to generate contextual sound effects in AR environments. Talk is 2-3:15PM in Allegheny 2. makeabilitylab.cs.washington.edu/project/Sonify…

So excited for the #UIST2024 Demo Session tonight. Come check out @makeabilitylab demos spanning drones, AR, and mobile fabrication. A 🧵.