E-Access Bulletin Live

For better or worse, the term ‘artificial intelligence’, or simply AI, still conjures up science-fiction-like images of dangerously powerful computers or malevolent robots overthrowing the human race. It still seems like something that belongs in the future, even though it’s been around for a long time and is being used by countless numbers of people on a daily basis, many without even realising.

Online retail websites, social media platforms, film and music streaming services, email filtering systems and ‘virtual assistants’ like Siri and Alexa all use AI, to name just a few uses. And as many e-Access Bulletin readers will know, those virtual assistants also have a wide range of benefits for people with disabilities. So, how can artificial intelligence be harnessed to provide as much assistance as possible for people with impairments? And how can the technology be developed in the future to be of even more use in this are?

These were two of the topics being discussed at an event in Vienna organised by the European Disability Forum (EDF), titled ‘Using artificial intelligence to enhance accessibility – opportunities and risks of emerging technologies for persons with disabilities’.

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A heavily funded program announced by Microsoft will aim to create and nurture advanced artificial intelligence (AI) products and services that can assist people with disabilities around the world.

The five-year program, named AI for Accessibility, was launched at the Microsoft Build conference in Seattle and will be funded by $25 million from Microsoft. The project will provide developers with AI tools and will focus on three key areas: employment, modern life and human connection.

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Driving economic growth through technology, the disability employment gap, and robotics in healthcare were some of the topics discussed at the latest meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Assistive Technology (APPGAT).

The aim of the meeting was to explore assistive technology in relation to the UK Industrial Strategy, unveiled by the Government in November of last year, which set out plans to boost the UK economy and industry.

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Blind and visually impaired users of Facebook will be able to find out which of their friends are in photos thanks to facial recognition technology.

Facial recognition is already used by the social networking site – for example, to suggest friends that users may want to tag in photos – but the company recently extended the use of this feature for screen-reader users. The new feature means that those users will be able to hear which of their friends are in photographs that appear on the user’s news feed, even if those friends are not tagged in the picture.

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