Story at a glance
- The latest recipients of Microsoft’s AI for Accessibility grants as part of a robust five-year, $25 million program.
- The 11 grantees include ingenious artificial intelligence projects for accessibility in travel, music and literacy.
Between virtual assistants, facial recognition and automatically suggested content on social media, our daily life is now filled with artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. And AI has the potential to make the digitally connected world more accessible to people with disabilities than it has ever been before. Microsoft recently announced the 11 latest recipients of its innovative AI for Accessibility grants.
AI for Accessibility is a five-year, $25 million grant program that Microsoft announced in 2018. They also announced AI for Earth and AI for Humanitarian Action the same year.
“Disabilities can be permanent, temporary or situational,” Microsoft President Brad Smith wrote in the announcement. “By innovating for people with disabilities, we are innovating for us all.”
The latest grantees are using AI to address diverse problems. One grant recipient, ObjectiveEd, aims to use iPads and refreshable braille displays to help blind students practice the touch-based writing system, TechCrunch reports. Another project, AbiliTrek, allows users in the disability community to create a personal profile and gather details about the accessibility of establishments like hotels and restaurants, or “almost any place someone can trek,” according to their website.
For folks with hearing disabilities, Azur Tech Concept aims to provide a visual cue to indicate environmental alarm sounds, Filmgsindl GmbH is developing Eve, a real-time subtitle generating tool, and BeatCaps is working on a visual transcription for the rhythm of music. A full list of AI for Accessibility grantees can be found at TechCrunch.
“We have a huge opportunity and a responsibility to be making technology smarter and more useful for people with disabilities,” says Mary Bellard, Microsoft senior architect lead for accessibility. “The amount of potential that there is for software or hardware to better meet the needs of people with disabilities … is just an amazing opportunity.”
Published on Nov 04,2019