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Unicef and “AT in Inclusive Education for Children with Disabilities” at the UN in Geneva

two people at the exhibition stand
Questions about linking symbol sets!

On March 7/8 2019 we had a stand in the UN E building during the 40th session of the Human Rights Council This meant we met many interesting people from around the world thanks to an invitation from UNICEF in partnership with the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Bulgaria and other International Organisations in Geneva.

Monument sized chair with one leg smashed as if by a mine
Broken chair in The Place des Nations’

Twenty-one companies where showcasing their assistive technologies and services from alternative ebook organisations such as Bookshare and eKitabu to innovative wheelchairs, prosthetics and apps

Livox parrot logo

There were several companies that were using machine learning as the back bone of some their products for example Livox which is an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) app designed to work on Android tablets to help children to develop speech and language skills. The app uses machine learning to adapt to the child’s situation and user skills. “Through artificial intelligence Livox will learn user’s routine and bring information according with the use based on time and location.”

two childlike robots
Kasper and a friend

Compusult are working with the University of Hertfordshire to develop Kasper into an assistive intelligent robot to support children with social behaviour difficulties such as autism. Much research has been undertaken to show the impact Kasper has had on children and the most recent publications are available from the Robot House at the University.

AAC board with symbols
cBoard symbol chart

The UNICEF sponsored eKitabu service and cBoard app developers have been exploring the use of machine learning as a way of gathering data that can show how their technologies have been used. cBoard, uses open symbols and open board format and wants to see how their users’ speech and language skills develop as a result of using their app. This type of reporting and data collection can be found in an article about logging data by CoughDrop

(EPFL) Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne were showcasing some of their research into how technologies from eyetracking to robots could be used in learning situations supporting better MOOC design to handwriting. VerbaVoice has also been used in education to offer online interpreting for the live visualisation of language as captions and sign language. This helps those who are deaf and can be used for streamed language translations from the text provided.

The use of the internet to access software for the designing of affordable 3D printed prosthetics was also on show with Prosfit based in Bulgaria and ProjectVive from the USA showing how it is possible to 3D print the hardware that makes any tablet a usable AAC device with mounting kits, switches and amplifiers.

Finally Voiceitt was showing how speech recognition used with non-standard speech is possible . The system enables someone with poor articulation or dysarthria to turn their speech into text. There are examples of beta testers using the technology that has been funded by an EU Horizon 2020 programme.

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IBM Project Debater

IBM say that that “Project Debater is the first AI system that can debate humans on complex topics. The goal is to help people build persuasive arguments and make well-informed decisions.” They showcased a fascinating debate on pre-school subsidies with experts and a live audience in San Francisco. Project Debater won the argument!

Project Debater has a very clear synthetic female voice and puts together enormous amounts of data about a subject and presents it in a very succinct way that makes perfect sense.

One wonders how this system could perhaps be used to work with those who need to be encouraged to have conversations and like to use technology rather than face humans in a debate. Also to help with practicing debating skills when social behaviour skills need encouraging and shyness needs to be overcome. The system could possibly help those with cognitive disabilities understand issues and be trained to allow more time between statements, perhaps to slow down a little and to use easy to comprehend language. Lots of ideas to think about and IBM have provided more information on how the project works.

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NHS gets AI code of conduct

doctor with board, heartbeat and swipe card

The Department of Health and Social Care has published an updated Code of conduct for data-driven health and care technology with a reorganised set of principles that are easier to read. Austin Clarke says that:

“The code encourages technology companies to meet a gold-standard set of principles to protect patient data to the highest standards. It has been drawn up with the help of industry, academics and patient groups.

The aim is to make it easier for suppliers to develop technologies that tackle some of the biggest issues in healthcare, such as dementia, obesity and cancer. It will also help health and care providers choose safe, effective and secure technology to improve the services they provide.”

The 10 Principles are as follows:

The principles

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Machine learning, body tracking and creativity

The Google Accessibility Blog has a collection of fascinating articles including one by Claire Kearney-Volpe, a Designer and researcher who made Creatability. This is a set of creative tools that can be used with any input device and have encouraged creation by a group of disabled users. The YouTube video about Creatability has captions and an expanded audio-described version of this video lives at: https://youtu.be/SbrMu6BuVWU

The various experiments use different input methods from head tracking to switch access. The site suggests that you explore ways to ” make music by moving your face, draw using sight or sound, and experience music visually. “

The system uses Posenet  combined with Tensorflow.js allowing a user to move in front of a webcam and create fun things within a browser – no downloading of programs or storage of data on other people’s servers. The code is open source and can be found on the Google Creativity Lab Github account.

There are lots of experiments that have been shared on the Creatability website with support and further resources.

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The Three Dimensions of Inclusive Design

swirls with the three guidelines

The three dimensions of inclusive design thanks to
Inclusive Design Research Centre

Jutta Treviranus has developed a ” a guiding framework for inclusive design, suitable for a digitally transformed and increasingly connected context. ”

The three dimensions of the framework are:

1. Recognize, respect, and design for human uniqueness and variability.

2. Use inclusive, open & transparent processes, and co-design with people who have a diversity of perspectives, including people that can’t use or have difficulty using the current designs.

3. Realize that you are designing in a complex adaptive system.

The three blogs about ‘The Three Dimensions of Inclusive Design’  were published in March, April and May 2018 and encourage us to think very seriously about how we can make everything we do in our digital world more accessible and inclusive. In her final blog Jutta says:

Including difference is how we evolve as a human society. Inclusive design is about far more than addressing disability. But disability has been called our last frontier. It is the human difference that our social structures have not yet integrated. This is paradoxical because disability is a potential state we can all find ourselves in. If we reject and exclude individuals who experience disabilities, we reject and exclude our future selves and our loved ones.

Jutta Treviranus
Director, Inclusive Design Research Centre, OCAD University

Dr John Gilligan from the Technical University of Dublin  sent me a link to on of Jutta’s tweets about AI and Inclusion. We are just beginning to explore in more depth where the gaps are when thinking about AI and inclusion and how this impacts in both positive and negative ways on at least 20% of the world’s population.

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Will AI combined with Inclusive Design make Digital Accessibility mainstream in 2019?

Isabelle Roughol published an article on Linkedin on December 11th, 2018 titled “50 Big Ideas for 2019: What to watch in the year ahead” and number six on the list was “Inclusive design will go mainstream“. She wrote:

“A growing awareness among professionals and advances in artificial intelligence are transforming inclusive design, says Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft (LinkedIn’s parent company). “We used to call it assistive technologies and it used to be a checklist of things you did after the product was built,” he says. Now it’s “about taking this way upstream into the design process. What if we said upfront we want a design for people of different abilities to fully participate?” He points to the new Xbox adaptive controller, where even the packaging was designed to be accessible, or new AI that helps people with dyslexia read and comprehend written text.”


Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella on Inclusive Design, AI and Digital Accessibility . (This video is also available on YouTube)

“This notion of inclusive design and the breakthroughs in AI, the combination of these two, the juxtaposition of these two in building the next wave of products is probably going to be what we are going to see in a much more mainstream way” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella

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Southampton computer scientists named as Fellows of the Alan Turing Institute

Turing Fellows

ECS, University of Southampton 

Four academics from the School of Electronics and Computer Science  have been named Fellows of The Alan Turing Institute as part of a new cohort from the University of Southampton.

Professors Elena Simperl, Mike Wald, Sarvapali Ramchurn and Dr George Konstantinidis will address complex research challenges within the UK’s national institute for data science and artificial intelligence.

The researchers are among 19 leading academics at the University that will now bring to the Institute specific projects covering topics from machine learning for space physics to AI and inclusion.

The Alan Turing Institute was founded in 2015 to undertake world-class research that is applied to real-world problems, drives economic impact and societal good, leads the training of a new generation of scientists and shapes public conversation around data.

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