AccessAIble

Inclusive, just for you!

Inspiration

Going into a new environment is difficult for all of us. New sights, sounds or smells take some adjusting to – and there is a mental effort that goes with this adjustment. For someone who processes sensory information differently, this effort can be more significant According to a report by WHO, Around 15% of the global population – over a billion people – lives with some form of disability, of whom 2–4% experience significant difficulties in functioning. Individuals who live with sensory disabilities be it in a mild form or an extreme case, face barriers for inclusion in various aspects of life. Things we do with ease are often difficult for these individuals. Think about how difficult it is when we simply hurt or fracture a finger. Would you not want things to be made easier for you? While businesses are developing solutions to ensure more inclusivity, we are decades behind where we need to be with respect to accessibility for these individuals. A great example from the MS resource library spoke about a fractured figure. If you fracture a finger, you may be limited in how much or how fast you can type. In this instance, Speech Recognition could help you to continue to use your computer and stay productive or something as simple as the Sticky Key feature could make things much simpler

And that's the importance of accessibility right there. The tools you need in the circumstance you find yourself in. The social model of disabilitysuggests that it's our situation that disables us, focusing less on a medical model of diagnosis. All of us find ourselves disabled at some time, and we need our tech to work for us. Therefore, organizations focus so heavily in inclusive & accessible solutions.

But we are decades behind where we need to be. It is time to relook if we are actively including every kind of user and ensuring that accessibility is made it an active part of design

What it does

AccessAIble is a combination of latest software technologies with AI and Computer Vision to create apps and experiences which allow much more than just the conventional screen interactions. Users can interact using Audio/Voice, Sign Language etc depending on the users’ abilities. This allows you to create apps which are much more inclusive, create experiences where everyone is welcome. One of the key apps running on this platform leverages the use of sign language, touch and voice features to provide visitors who are specially abled a seamless onboarding experience

How we built it

The platform was developed by a niche team whose expertise varied across IoT, cloud, Computer vision, UI/UX and much more. Research as well as numerous discussions helped us shape our end user requirements. The platform leveraged the latest advancements in Body tracking, 3D cameras, NLP systems to bring in intelligence. The base components can be easily repurposed for any new use case which require human context understanding. Thereby developing a platform which focused on a code/no code approach (for easy solution onboarding in the future) while enabling multiple touchpoints for ease of user interactions. While the development was done with Node JS as the main programming language it can be interfaced with other languages like Python, Java etc.

Challenges we ran into

Visualizing the use case/ Identifying relevant end use cases for accessibility
Accurate tracking of gestures in real time
Multiple developers working on diverse solutions working on the same platform

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We have the key building blocks in place which will be essential to create repeatable and scalable solutions in the future, we consider these successes as key accomplishments that we’re especially proud of. Some of the examples are mentioned below:

Full Integration – While we worked for a long time on building individual blocks of Computer vision, Display, Gestures and Interfaces, the Eureka moment was when the full hardware and software integration worked. We have been able to successfully integrate Interfaces, hardware, and edge computing to give a stable experience to developers.
Complex parts – Gestures and pose are key inputs when building an accessible system. Accurately tracking the gestures and poses of the user was one of the key concerns which has multiple factors such as lighting, camera feed etc. Building software components that can track this information and allowed the developers to focus on solving real problems.
End User Validation – Finally, any engineering innovation is meaningful only when it is accepted by the people who’ll use it. We have received positive responses from the sample batch of users who frequently work with individuals who are specially abled. This gives us the confidence that solutions build on AccesIAble will truly make a difference.

What we learned

One of the major eye openers for us beyond understanding the importance of ensuring all solutions we develop should keep inclusion as its cornerstone was to involve individuals with sensory limitations An article by the Huffington post aptly stated - Nothing about us without us. expresses the conviction of people with disabilities that they know what is best for them This mantra “Also reinforces the role of people without disabilities as strong allies and partners who share the role towards inclusivity and accessibility” Reference: Huffington Post

What's next for AccessAIble

The potential of this platform is limitless. ASL, Voice and Gesture based interactions are just the first steps to impact change, the potential for onboarding and integrating accessibility supporting devices is unlimited with AccessAIble. Whether its Braille displays, Haptic feedback or other interfaces, we’re just waiting to integrate and develop with them. Further optimization of the platform is also ongoing to enable easy and effective onboarding of further applications ensure the best means of inclusivity.