Microsoft Teams Gets Improved Sign Language

 New accessibility

Microsoft Teams is getting a sign language view  in theVerge

The new accessibility feature creates a larger, high-quality view for interpreters and signers separate from other call participants or presentations.

By JESS WEATHERBED   Nov 18, 2022, 7:57 AM EST|

A screenshot of Microsoft Teams new sign language view. A signer is prioritized on the left, with another call participants kept separately on the right.

Sign language view allows signers to prioritize up to two video streams on center stage, in a consistent location during every meeting. Image: Microsoft

Microsoft has a new dedicated sign language view for its Microsoft Teams video conferencing platform. The feature enables sign language users to select up to two other participants’ videos to be fixed in a central location, allowing designated signers to be visible throughout the meeting.

Microsoft says Teams users can enable the feature for all meetings or on a meeting-by-meeting basis, which is especially useful for non-hearing impaired signers. Sign language interpreters can be pre-assigned prior to starting a meeting if they’re within your organization, and external interpreters can only be assigned within a meeting using the Accessibility tab in the app settings. Microsoft does not provide sign language interpreters for Teams meetings.

Sign language view doesn’t affect what other call participants can see on Teams

Other participants can still be pinned without encroaching on the prioritized video streams of the signer, which will default to an uncropped ratio at the highest available quality. The prioritized stream shifts when a presentation is shared but will still be easily distinguishable from other participants, retaining a larger size and high video quality. Sign language view is also personal to the user — other call participants will not be alerted or have their own Teams view altered.

Microsoft is also announcing a new sticky Accessibility preferences pane for Teams. The new pane gives users easy access during calls to make changes like turning on sign language view by default or pre-identifying preferred signers. Sign language view and live captions can also be quickly toggled on or off within the pane. ...'

Accessibility Challenges

 Working at the edge of  accessibility is very instructive.

For Blind Internet Users, the Fix Can Be Worse Than the Flaws

The New York Times   

Amanda Morris, July 18, 2022

Many people with disabilities say automated accessibility tools have made websites harder to navigate. In some cases, these tools have hidden widgets or incorrectly coded labels for images and buttons. Over 400 businesses using automated accessibility tools or overlays from companies like AudioEye, accessiBe, and UserWay were sued last year over accessibility issues. Further, an open letter from more than 700 accessibility advocates and Web developers has called on organizations to cease their use of accessibility tools given that the "overlays themselves may have accessibility problems" and that many who are blind or low vision already use screen readers or other software to navigate sites. Although the companies offering such tools say their products will improve over time, blind and low vision people argue that it is not fair for them to have to wait when everyday tasks increasingly require them to visit websites.   ..

Tech Firms Train Voice Assistants to Understand Atypical Speech

Summary piece on the topic.    Fundamental aspect of accessibility, good to see that many of the big players are examining.  Recall our own enterprise effort quickly ran into this. 

Tech Firms Train Voice Assistants to Understand Atypical Speech

Voice assistants like Alexa and Siri often can’t understand people with dysarthria or a stutter; their creators say that may change

Amazon recently announced a tie-up with Voiceitt, a startup that lets people with speech impairments train an algorithm to recognize their vocal patterns.

By Katie Deighton   Feb. 24, 2021 12:00 pm ET

Dagmar Munn and her husband purchased a smart speaker from Amazon.com Inc. for their home in Green Valley, Ariz. in 2017, seven years after Ms. Munn was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the motor neuron disease more commonly referred to as ALS.

At first the speaker’s voice assistant, Alexa, could understand what Ms. Munn was saying. But as her condition worsened and her speech grew slower and more slurred, she found herself unable to communicate with the voice technology.

“I’m not fast enough for it,” Ms. Munn said. “If I want to say something like ‘Alexa, tell me the news,’ it will shut down before I finish asking.”

Ms. Munn can’t interact with voice assistants such as Alexa because the technology hasn’t been trained to understand people with dysarthria, a speech disorder caused by weakening speech muscles. People with a stutter or nonstandard speech caused by hearing loss or mouth cancer can also struggle to be understood by voice assistants.

Approximately 7.5 million people in the U.S. have trouble using their voices, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. Julie Cattiau, a product manager in Google’s artificial intelligence team, said that group is at risk of being left behind by voice-recognition technology.

Google General Voice Accessibility

In  the Google Blog, a means of more general voice accessibility via voice on the android phone.  Now updated. 

ACCESSIBILITY

Use Voice Access to control your Android device with your voice

Easily use and navigate your phone by speaking out loud with Voice Access. Image shows two cartoon figures, one who uses a wheelchair and has their phone mounted in front of them, and another standing behind the wheelchair as they take a selfie.

Tom Hume, Senior Product Manager, Google Research

In 2018, we launched Voice Access, an Android app that lets you control your phone using your voice. The ability to use your phone hands-free has been helpful to people with disabilities, and also those without.

Today, on International Day of Persons with Disabilities, we’re rolling out an updated version of Voice Access, available in Beta, that is easier to use and available to more people. This version of Voice Access, which was previously available on Android 11, is now available globally to devices running Android 6.0 and above.   ... " 

Delta Airlines Develops Disruption Predictions

Example in the aviation industry, would seem to be much available data, consideration and implications  of inaccurate predictions?

Delta Develops Artificial Intelligence Tool to Address Weather Disruption, Improve Flight Operations    By Woodrow Bellamy III | January 8, 2020

Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian used his keynote speech at the annual Consumer Electronics Show to discuss a new 2020s operational structure for the international carrier that will be driven by the use of a new artificial intelligence (AI) machine learning tool.

Under development at Delta’s operations and customer center, Bastian did not provide a specific product name for the technology, but instead called it a proprietary tool that will mainly be focused on helping passengers and flight crews overcome weather occurrences that impact the routes they fly on a daily basis. The keynote speech is a familiar strategy across all of the divisions of Delta, including their maintenance team whose predictive maintenance leadership gave a speech on how the airline is shifting towards the adoption of AI at the 2019 AEEC/AMC annual conference.  .... "

Google Overviews Accessibility Efforts

Have always though of accessibility as having a goal of augmentation.   If its an assistant or simple access adjustment.  Good examples here.

Making technology accessible for everyone in the Google Blog
Super G pinata
Written by Keyword Team

The World Health Organization estimates that 15 percent of the world’s population—over 1 billion people—have a disability. October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month, an opportunity to look at how technology enables us to move toward a more accessible world. Google’s accessibility-first design mentality, coupled with advances in technology like AI, has led to the creation of new products for people with disabilities. And when we get it right, this technology will ultimately result in products that work better for all of us. It’s a perfect example of what we mean by building a more helpful Google for everyone. This month we will highlight some of those efforts and the people behind the work.    .... "

IKEA 3D Prints

IKEA makes furniture more accessible with 3D printing
ThisAbles could help more people navigate their home.   By Jon Fingas in Engadget

Cognixion Enabling Assistant Support with AI

Long time correspondent Andreas Forsland provides information about Cognixion:

Cognixion™: Giving AI-Superpowers to Humans with Disabilities

Andreas Forsland, Founder & CEO  in CIO Review

Although smart and intellectual, world-renowned scientist, Stephen Hawking, would not have contributed to cosmology and theoretical physics without the necessary assistive technology support to communicate with the external world. Leveraging state-of-the-art, but expensive technology, Hawking could unsheathe new dimensions in the field of science just by blinking an eye and twitching a cheek. 

Now, what many don’t realize is that there are almost half a billion people worldwide with speech disabilities and over a billion with accessibility barriers if you include hearing and vision loss. There are likely hundreds or even thousands of people out there just like Stephen Hawking, awaiting the right technology at the right price to unlock their own creativity, curiosity, self-expression, and inclusion. 

Try imagining a world where every differently abled person could seamlessly communicate without being hampered by their disabilities. But, is it possible to contrive advanced technologies of this kind at scale? “The vivid applications of latest technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and augmented reality (AR) can make it possible,” answers Andreas Forsland, founder and CEO of Cognixion. With a desire to democratize communication, Forsland laid the foundation of Cognixion, an AI-based company. Cognixion brings together the power of AI, ML, and AR to devise affordable products that enrich human communication. “Through our inventive technology, we allow differentially abled people to use their brain waves to control objects around them in the real and digital world. It is like a virtual mouse reading brain signals and taking decisions accordingly.”  .... "

Morse Code for Acccesibility

Most interesting.  Clever idea that has been developed further. Nice idea Google with GBoard!

Google’s Morse code-powered games aim to serve kids with limited mobility In Digitaltrends

Google is now offering access to five games controlled entirely by Morse code, thanks to a 48 hour “hackathon,” and a partnership with Adaptive Design Association. The games use the Morse code functionality introduced into Gboard in May 2018, and are intended for people with limited mobility who cannot use other control methods, as well as for people who are interested in learning Morse code.

The games were created over a period of two days by five teams of game designers and developers, each working with a child with limited mobility. Each of these children worked as the game’s creative director, and their specific vision helped to shape the games, making them uniquely molded around each child’s interests. For instance, Olivia’s “Alphabet’s Got Talent” is modeled after the talent shows she loves, while Hannah’s game uses Morse code to play musical notes. Players will be able to shoot soccer balls at targets in Matthew’s game, and Ben’s passion for trains is clear in his game that shows YouTube videos on a train once the correct letters are typed. Emmett — whose learning of Morse code through a similar Google-built game inspired this challenge — created a maze solved by typing different letters.  .... " 

See more on morse code assistant technology.  In experiments with Google.

Wearable Music

New limits to music accessibility.

New wearable tech lets users listen to live music through their skin

It's inspired by deaf fans of live concerts to help them "feel" the music. By Jenifer Ouellette in Ars Technica

" ... The tech is called Music: Not Impossible (M:NI), and it's the brainchild of former Hollywood producer turned entrepreneur Mick Ebeling, founder and CEO of Not Impossible Labs. The user's kit includes two battery-powered wristbands, two ankle bands, and a harness that fits across the back and shoulders. It interfaces directly with a venue's sound system and sends electrical pulses (coordinated with colored LED lights) corresponding to various tracks in the music to the sensors against the skin. Lady Gaga, Hans Zimmer, and Pharrell are fans, with the latter declaring he had "felt the future" after trying M:NI out. The Las Vegas show was presented by Zappos Adaptive and the Church of Rock & Roll.  ... "

Hack to Get Amazon Alexa to Respond to ASL

Had heard of this before, here are more details.  Still very much an early  prototype.   How close can this get to being very useful?   Below the motivation...

Getting Alexa to Respond to Sign Language Using Your Webcam and TensorFlow.js
By Abhishek Singh in Medium

A few months ago, while lying in bed one night, a thought flashed through my head — “If voice is the future of computing interfaces, what about those who cannot hear or speak?”. I don’t know what exactly triggered this thought, I myself can speak and hear and have no one close to me who is either deaf or mute, nor do I own a voice assistant. Perhaps it was the countless articles popping up on the proliferance of voice assistants, or the competition between large companies to become your voice activated home assistant of choice, or simply seeing these devices more frequently on the counter tops of friends’ homes. As the question refused to fade from memory, I knew it was an itch I needed to scratch.

It eventually led to this project, a proof of concept where I got an Amazon Echo to respond to sign language — American Sign Language (ASL) to be more precise, since similar to spoken language there are a variety of sign languages as well.  ... "

Remarkable Accessibility and Assistant tech

Remarkable assisting technology is surveyed in DigitalTrends:

From translating hearing aids to sign-language gloves, amazing assistive tech

Think that assistive technology for the deaf and hard of hearing community is all about your run-of-the-mill hearing aids here in 2018? Think again!

From signing robot arms to mind-reading hearing aids, the next few years are going to be pretty darn amazing for accessibility technology if this list is anything to go by. Here are some of the most impressive tech projects we’ve come across in this area.  ... "

Echo Mod for Sign Language

When I saw this, appeared that this is a hard thing to do, and apparently the range of signs and capabilities are still limited, but a remarkable possibility.  For Echo devices that include cameras, the system detects and interprets sign language.

This Amazon Echo mod lets Alexa understand sign language
‘If voice is the future of computing, what about those who cannot speak or hear?’   By James Vincent   @jjvincent  in theverge

Thoughts on the Value of New Accessibility

New innovation starts with sensors and their integration.  With data and analytics.  A kind of accessibility.   So you can look to accessibility for innovation.  AI is a form of accessibility, accessing the symbolic power of logic and math, which in the past was something unique in brains.   No longer.

Was reminded of this thought reading about Microsoft's plans for new accessibility in 2017.