Role of AI for a disabled person
“Disabled people are limited in their capacity to do some physical tasks!”, this statement is not entirely true. Every single person whether disabled or not has a limit of doing physical work but we don’t call them disabled. We often try to look down on people with physical constraints and think these physical constraints make them dependent on us. I prefer to believe that these so-called ‘disabled people’ are not disabled at all, they are able just as any of us…only differently. For example, a blind person is restricted in a way that he/she is not able to see anything but skills like reading and understanding can be developed using techniques like braille. AI researchers have been constantly looking for methods that could help differently-abled people connect with the world around them more actively. In this blog, we will be discussing some of the most effective ways AI researchers have proposed and developed to reduce the difficulties and challenges that differently-abled people face daily.
AI stands for artificial intelligence, meaning an intelligence that is capable of carrying out a task or a set of tasks on its own without human intervention. AI can help automate some of the tasks that typically require human intelligence, such as speech recognition, speech comprehension and translation, voice recognition, visual perception and translation to speech, predictive text functionality, decision making etcetera. People with physical constraints can be assisted with appropriate technology to help them overcome their limitations. Artificial Intelligence can be very significant in making life easier for many people by providing them with interactive tools that support physical accessibility and independence.
Human Interaction
Speech Assistance
Artificial Intelligent Voice Assisted technologies, such as Alexa, Google Home and Echo have proved to be highly effective in terms of accessibility and ease of use for differently-abled people. Today, just by speaking to their devices, people can do a lot of work which is truly impressive. Speech-to-text and Text-to-speech advancements have enabled individuals to access information and communicate with the world in a much simpler way. An AI tool ‘Parrotron’ developed by Google AI helps speech-impaired users to be understood by converting broken speech patterns or impaired voices into fluent speech. Voice systems like ‘Voiceitt’ can be trained for speech-impaired users’ over time to learn the features of their specific speech patterns and transform that pattern into a much better version. Individuals with speech difficulties can leverage these assistive technologies not only to browse the internet and use various devices and give commands to do their daily tasks but also to communicate with real people like a normal person would do.
Hearing Assistance
People with limitations while hearing often require the use of sign language (a technique to translate hand gestures into words and sentences) and one other person that understands that sign language. Now, we have multiple languages and hence multiple sign codes for different words and letters. A hearing-impaired individual is not able to communicate with everyone without the use of a mediator i.e. and a human being who knows sign language. By the use of AI, this dependency can be automated, now some systems understand different visual signs and provide textual and/or audio translations. One of the most popular applications regarding this use case is GnoSys, it is an android application that provides an interpretation of Sign Language in the form of text or speech. It leverages techniques such as neural networks and computer vision. One more application from Google is DeepMind that uses AI to decipher the words by reading lips and converting them into text or audio output. There are apps for American Sign Language such as MotionSavvy and GnoSys and Indian Sign Language such as Sign Stream.
Visual Assistance
Artificial Intelligence can also be used to assist visually impaired individuals using various image recognition techniques. Object detection and object segmentation allow an automated system to understand the context of an object in an image or the whole image itself and present it in the form of text or audio. ‘A picture is worth a thousand words, and AI can help detect those words. A Computer Vision platform, Microsoft’s Seeing AI is so incredibly developed and narrates the world around visually impaired people by reading texts, describing how the person looks, recognizing faces and emotions.
Application developers are constantly trying to make the world a better place, nowadays some websites are also equipped with voice assistants to make them easily accessible for visually impaired people enabling them to do a lot more bringing a new level of independence.
Smart Home — Limited Mobility
With everything getting electronic, it can be controlled just by one command from your mobile phone. Smart Home Technology can assist people having limited mobility. Using just a single command, touch, text or voice can allow a user to access any electronic device linked to the network from fans, lights to television and cars. They can control all the components of their home and make every corner more accessible. AI-assisted homes using Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant etcetera are a great way to provide people with limited motor function with an independent and easy living.
Enhanced Accessibility
People today are utilizing the potential of artificial intelligence to build innovative solutions to solve many physical and cognitive challenges differently-abled people face in daily life while they are at work or someplace else or even at home, this not only promotes social inclusion for them but also provides them independence and hence confidence and productivity.
Autonomous transportation such as a car powered by artificial intelligence uplifts people with mobility difficulties by providing them freedom of mobility. Autonomous vehicles solutions developed by big companies like Google’s Waymo, Uber, Lyft, Drive AI and others could help certain people have a more normal lifestyle. This increased accessibility of getting out of the house and interacting with people surely gives a sense of independence. AI-powered solutions stand to make a real difference for people with disabilities, by supporting them in various activities of daily living and enabling them to gain new skills.
