We know our members could use some cool STEM projects to do with their patrons and students as we get toward the end of this tough semester. We are celebrating the fun of doing citizen science, and enjoying all sorts of STEM projects from the website SciStarter: Science We Can Do Together.

I love this project! Curb cuts are so important, and it’s tough for cities to keep up with them. Their value for people in wheelchairs or walkers is obvious. Their benefit to people pushing strollers is clear. The benefits may not be as obvious for those of us who have lousy balance, but for sure not having to navigate uncertain steps up is a wonderful thing.

So what can we do about this? Join in the project from The Makeability Lab at the University of Washington! A few minutes of work will help them to train their program to detect accessibility issues, so your work will be useful.

“Despite comprehensive civil rights legislation for Americans with disabilities, many city streets, sidewalks, and businesses remain inaccessible. Project Sidewalk, and our network of volunteers, plan to change that. Project Sidewalk is a web-based tool that allows anyone with a web browser and internet connection to contribute sidewalk accessibility information virtually using Google Street View. The data we collect is open and publicly available through our APIs. The data can be used by city governments to prioritize certain places for sidewalk upgrades/repairs. It can and has been used by members of the community to lobby for more funding for sidewalk repairs by the city. Or the data could be used in a number of other ways, including through new pedestrian routing applications!

The long term goal of Project Sidewalk is to use this very large dataset to train computer vision and machine learning algorithms to detect accessibility problems automatically. Collecting accessibility data is expensive for cities and time consuming for volunteers. If this data can be collected automatically, it will free up money in city budgets to actually do the sidewalk repairs.”

“Head to http://projectsidewalk.io?referrer=scistarter, choose from one of the cities listed on that page (the default is Seattle), click on “sign in/up” in the top right corner to track your contributions, then click “Start Exploring”!

From there, you will be guided through a tutorial that explains how to use Project Sidewalk to mark accessibility features like curb ramps and problems like obstacles on the sidewalk! If you’d like to start with something a little faster/easier, you can click on “Start Validating” on the navbar at the top. From there, you will vote on whether labels contributed by other volunteers are correct!”

I love this! And it is accessible and easy to do for anyone middle school and up! (Those are the guidelines, but if you have younger kids who want to try, see how it goes.)

How can you bring this into your library’s work? Here are a few ideas to help you gets started:

• Draw pictures of a good neighborhood, including houses, apartments, businesses, streets, and anything else
• Do some photography of the things you see every day. What makes them special? What can you do to help other people see these things?
• Look at maps of different places. What looks interesting? How can you decide if you want to go somewhere? Can you find a way to get from your house to an interesting new place?
• Do you know about other projects that are done with large numbers of people working together for the same goal? Can you think of other issues that may be solved if a lot of people worked on it?
• A lot of sidewalks are made of concrete. Using all kinds of different materials, make a representation of a good sidewalk you would like to see near your school or your house. Would there be flowers? Roller skates? Would you be able to bounce down the sidewalk? Could you step into a device that would let you fly above everyone who is walking?
• Think about other places that might be tough for people with disabilities. How easy is it to get into your library? Or to your classroom? If someone had vision trouble, is there a good way to get down the sidewalks near you? If someone has hearing trouble, what could your library do to make it better for everyone?
• Can you figure out how to create an app that would look at a bunch of pictures, and identify something specific in each one?