"It is very interesting to see that students are applying the AI technology in different ways in several use cases, helping us in industries like healthcare and education," Anant Maheshwari, President, Microsoft India, recently told IANS. The tech giant last year hosted its first "Accessibility Summit" in India. The summit featured unique technology-based projects that empower people with disabilities. These included innovations from non-profit organisations, assistive technologies developed by partners as well as Microsoft solutions.
The "AI for Accessibility" programme will be run by Microsoft Accessibility team and its leader Jenny Lay-Flurrie who is Chief Accessibility Officer. "By making AI solutions more widely available, we believe technology can have a broad impact on this important community," said Microsoft President Brad Smith. "AI advances like these offer enormous potential by enabling people with vision, hearing, cognitive, learning, mobility disabilities and mental health conditions do more in three specific scenarios: employment, modern life and human connection," Smith reiterated.
To begin with, the programme will provide seed grants of technology to developers, universities, non-governmental organisations and inventors. "Next, we will identify the projects that show the most promise and make larger investments of technology and access to Microsoft AI experts to help bring them to scale.
"Thirdly, as we infuse AI and inclusive design across our offerings, we will help our partners incorporate AI innovations into platform level services to empower others to maximise the accessibility of their offerings," Smith informed. Helpicto, an application that turns voice commands into images, is enabling children in France with autism to better understand situations and communicate with others. "Seeing AI" and auto alt-text features are helping narrate the world for people who are blind or low vision.
Microsoft last year introduced "AI for Earth" -- a comprehensive programme to apply AI towards unlocking solutions to climate, water, agriculture and the biodiversity issues.