Microsoft's AI for Accessibilty program: What it is, and why it's important
Prototype Credit: Microsoft
Microsoft announced AI for Accessibility during its 2022 Build programmer conference. This multi-million dollar grant program helps companies harness the power of Microsoft'southward AI and cloud to raise human capabilities for the i billion people living with disabilities.
Admittedly, Microsoft and others are partially motivated to promote inclusion to escape legal backlash, avoid negative perception for exclusionary behavior, and enhance revenue past embracing more customers. Information technology would be naïve to presume these factors have no bearing on accessibility efforts.
It'due south shortsighted, however, to presume those factors are driving Microsoft's inclusive blueprint and hiring practices. I believe Microsoft's accessibility mission is driven by the empathy of its CEO Satya Nadella.
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The mission's cadre
Accessibility progressed from being role of Microsoft'south mission to being cadre to its identity after Nadella became CEO. The empathy Nadella learned through parenting a son with astringent Cerebral Palsy and seeing the world through his eyes is helping Nadella shape Microsoft into a visitor that considers accessibility and inclusion central qualities of its products, services and hiring practices rather than secondary modifications of the same. Thus, AI for Accessibility targets:
- Employment — AI positively influences workplace culture, hiring practices and professional development for people with disabilities.
- Modern life — AI "sees, hears and reasons" via affordable software and devices, providing people with disabilities greater autonomy.
- Human connection — Applied science enables equal opportunities to admission information.
From AI-driven apps that help the bullheaded to an Adaptive Controller that brings gaming to millions, Microsoft's striving, though more progress must be made, to embrace the disabled masses.
The apps
Today 253 meg people are living with visual impairments. Microsoft's Seeing AI app for iOS uses its cognitive services and AI to perceive the world, objects, text and more. Seeing AI was inducted into the AppleVis iOS App Hall of Fame, and Microsoft was awarded the American Foundation for the Blind's (AFB) prestigious Helen Keller Award for its inclusion work.
Get Seeing AI at iTunes
Microsoft's Soundscape uses 3D sound applied science to enable "users to place audio cues in 3D infinite." These cues sound similar they're coming from points of interest and more in a user's surroundings.
Some other 466 million people are living with disabling hearing loss. Microsoft Garage's Hearing AI iOS app, a completed experiment, provided visualizations of ambient sounds, notifications for audio changes and existent-time oral communication transcription.
Get Soundscape at iTunes
The projects
Microsoft's Director of Innovation Haiyan Zhang created the Emma Watch that abated Parkinson'south Disease-induced tremors and prevented a woman named Emma Lawton from writing her name. Through Projection Emma, Microsoft's using tech to fight Parkinson'southward, which affects 10 1000000 people worldwide.
Microsoft's Projection Emma combats Parkinson'south Disease
Microsoft helped former NFL star Steve Gleason, who'south living with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), regain speech and mobility through eye-tracking tech built into Windows x and a modified wheelchair.
Project Fizzyo uses a video game to encourage children with Cystic Fibrosis to receive life-saving treatments, while Project Torino teaches blind children how to code. The Helpicto app uses pictograms to assist children who are nonverbal communicate.
Microsoft's new Xbox Adaptive Controller enables people with disabilities to play video games. The controller is littered with ports, assuasive for a multifariousness of modifications to encounter diverse accessibility needs. Amidst the celebration from gamers, Xbox head Phil Spencer acknowledged the Adaptive Controller can be a "platform" expanded upon beyond gaming.
Epitome Credit: Microsoft
Microsoft's Autism Hiring Program successfully recruits people with autism past tailoring the hiring procedure to avoid practices that inherently work against people with the condition.
Additionally, Microsoft was selected to sponsor the 2022 Special Olympics in Seattle, Wash. With an expected 50,000 visitors, Microsoft vice president Brad Smith hopes to transform Seattle into a metropolis of inclusion. Through ten,000 volunteer positions, youth-led initiatives, special events for the broader community, unified sporting events and just auspicious on participants, Microsoft's beckoning everyone to participate.
Microsoft promotes metropolis-wide inclusion as Special Olympic sponsors
Family-inspired, empathy-driven inclusion
Microsoft's AI for Accessibility initiative isn't a standalone effort. It's buttressed by Microsoft's mission to cover people of varying abilities. Nadella's experience-driven empathy for people with special needs (as a father of two children with disabilities) is the burn down molding Microsoft's inclusion mission.
The philanthropic efforts of corporations are often scrutinized as being self-serving. In Microsoft's example, I call back the drive toward inclusion is sincerely driven by Nadella's empathy, which he admits made him both a ameliorate person and CEO.
How fathering a son with disabilities helped Microsoft's CEO transform a company
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Oh Dear
New report reveals Microsoft'south futurity AR strategy; HoloLens three is dead
Business Insider has today published a follow-upward report with more details about Microsoft's canceled HoloLens iii augmented reality headset. The partnership with Samsung is said to include a headset with a fix of screens inside, powered by a Samsung phone in your pocket.
Keeping it affordable
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Starting at merely $250, Microsoft's offset foray into affordable laptops for the education market is a winner. With a gorgeous pattern, fantabulous thermals, and a fantastic typing experience, Microsoft would do right to sell this directly to consumers besides. Let's just promise Intel can make a ameliorate CPU.
Source: https://www.windowscentral.com/microsofts-ai-accessibilty-program-what-it-and-why-its-important
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