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Community Service Hours
This page has info on how to fulfill community service hours by contributing data to Project Sidewalk!
Most likely! If you just have a form where you fill in hours and need a signature from us to verify those hours, you should be good to go, but it's always a good idea to check beforehand. But some schools may have a list of approved community service projects to choose from. We are keeping a running list of schools/orgs that we know will accept Project Sidewalk hours below.
Definitely accepts Project Sidewalk hours:
- Newport High School
- Newport High School's National Honors Society
Definitely does not accept Project Sidewalk hours:
- None that we know of!
If you school/org has a list of approved projects and you don't see Project Sidewalk on there yet, please reach out to them and ask to have Project Sidewalk added! You can CC Mikey Saugstad (who will be the one signing off on your hours) at michaelssaugstad@gmail.com. You can include the pitch below in your email:
Want to help address an important social inequity while staying at home? Check out Project Sidewalk! Project Sidewalk, from the Makeability Lab at the University of Washington, aims to expand accessibility for people with physical disabilities by transforming the way accessibility information is collected and visualized for every sidewalk.
Contributing is easy, online, and limitless. Volunteers can contribute by labeling sidewalks through the online portal: projectsidewalk.io. For your hours to be counted, you must sign up and remain signed in while labeling. Once signed in, click "Start Exploring" to begin! You'll be taken to the tutorial first, and then you'll get going with labeling. If you're not sure how to label something, you can always check out the "How to Label" guide. Your hours will be verified by Mikey Saugstad (michaelssaugstad@gmail.com).
We are happy to hear that you're interested in volunteering with Project Sidewalk! We are hoping to expand accessibility of sidewalks for people with disabilities by mapping the accessibility of sidewalks in cities! Using Project Sidewalk, you will virtually walk through Seattle streets using Google Street View, and mark accessibility problems (like obstacles or cracks in the sidewalk) and accessibility features (like curb ramps) along the way!
What you'll need to do is go to projectsidewalk.io, create an account, and click "Start Exploring". You'll be directed through a tutorial that teaches you how to use the tool. You'll be asked to find and label accessibility problems yourself, and you will sometimes be asked to validate labels provided by other volunteers.
After your first hour or two of work, please email me (Mikey Saugstad; michaelssaugstad@gmail.com) with your username. At this point, I'll check over your work and give you some suggestions for how to improve going forward. I'd ask that you check in with me every hour or two in the beginning. Once I start giving you less feedback, feel free to do 5-10 hours at a time before checking back in. I would focus on quality over quantity here, because we want the highest quality data that we can get :)
And if you're ever wondering how you should label something, feel free to check out our Labeling Guide, which has some more detailed info than our tutorial. You can always reach out to me (Mikey) with questions as well!
When it comes time to get your hours verified, that process will depend on your school or organization. If you just need a signature, you can email the document that you need signed to me (Mikey), and I will either digitally sign it or print/sign/scan and send it back. Some school may have a dedicated web portal like x2vol that is meant for submitting hours. Just check with your school or organization to make sure you're submitting and getting your hours verified correctly!
Thanks for helping out on Project Sidewalk! I hope that you enjoy it, and maybe even learn a bit about what it means to make our infrastructure accessible along the way :)