Accessibility Beyond The Pandemic; Role of AI in Digital Inclusion

At a virtual class of about 100 participants, the facilitator shared a video to elaborate on a point. The video, it appears had bad audio footage. Now when a majority of us did not seem to be bothered by the hitch, we later learned with remorse that some of us were living with disabilities and needed a little bit of a tweak in tech to have enjoyed the video as much, or just to have fully participated in the class.

During the launch of the Web Accessibility Initiative in 1997, the inventor of the internet, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, said, “As we move towards a highly connected world, it is critical that the Web be usable by anyone, regardless of individual capabilities and disabilities.” Two decades later, the situation still looks bleak for most of the Persons Living With Disabilities (PWDs).

With so many people staying home due to the ongoing COVID-19-related restrictions and with learning, meeting, working, etc, done from home, and further, with the introduction of face masks that hinder lip-reading, PWDs are turning to technology to assist in their daily activities. They remain at risk of digital exclusion due to their ineligibility for disability given the inherent constraints of technology-based services. But all thanks to technologies like Artificial Intelligence, PWDs can significantly rely on tech devices and platforms to secure their participation in various life activities, including digital participation.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can ensure that people living with disabilities, who are at risk of marginalisation will not be excluded from the digital technologies they rely on for vital life support. AI can apply to any type of disability profile. For instance, people with reduced mobility can control everything at home just by using their voice with a virtual personal assistant such as Alexa from Amazon.

“Artificial intelligence, robotics, and other autonomous systems can foster inclusive participation,” says Robinson Muiru, Founder of Computer Engineering Forum and Software Engineer at Crowdsource NASA Space Projects. “AI technology removes accessibility barriers through many different solutions like image recognition and lip-reading to enable their (PWDs) full participation even digitally.”

Below are the basic examples of how AI can enhance inclusion among PWDs

• Image recognition for people with visual impairment
Today the world is a visual wall with images and videos prevalent in our daily lives. Unfortunately, this only means that the internet is becoming lesser accessible for those living with impaired vision. AI can enhance inclusivity among the visually challenged by allowing for simple and accurate labeling of images and videos for screen readers. This way it allows the visually impaired users the freedom to access the world independently and without the need for assistance from sighted individuals.

Some of the inclusive applications include My eye 2.0, Airpoly, LookTel, Bemyeyes, and TapTap See among others. All these enable facial recognition for people with visual impairment.

• Lip-reading recognition for people with hearing impairment and Text summarization for people with a mental impairment
Real-time captioning or translations for people with a hearing impairment or even people who don’t speak a specific language is heavenly! People with hard of hearing depend on the development of AI speech recognition technology as a sign of hope. Lip reading offers such people the only chance into conversations that would be lost without such technologies.

• Enhancing speech recognition software; AI can improve prediction in challenging situations, which can then be used to offer improvements to hearing aid clarity in noisy environments.
• Increasing context-aware prediction of vocabulary, for example through recognition of new voices and minority languages. Delivering this technology over mobile could be of particular importance to people with disabilities living in low-resource settings where access to traditional AT can be prohibitively expensive.
• Improving speaker recognition for transcriptions from people with speech impairments, conversations with multiple voices, or additional layers of inference to deliver information that is not stated explicitly.

AI offers the opportunity to improve communication through increased accessibility and has proven the potential to improve communication. Maybe in the future, AI could provide a more nuanced reflection of context rather than just a literal transition from one mode to another.
Article by Molly Wasonga, a DRIMF 2021at PIN