Towards a More Inclusive World: Enhanced Augmentative and Alternative Communication For People With Disabilities UsingAI and NLP

For people with verbal or cognitive impairments, engaging in conversation can be tiresome and time-consuming, limiting their educational, social, and career opportunities. Livox is a pictogram-based alternative communication application that empowers people with a wide range of visual and motor impairments to engage in conversations. This project incorporated a ML and NLP-based classifier to detect specific questions and present the most relevant pictograms to users. Our newly introduced classifier reduced the time and effort required to communicate by 68.5% and 56.4%, respectively compared to the standard application. These results show that our work is a step towards making the world a more inclusive place for those who are nonverbal and have motor skill challenges

An overview of machine learning and 5G for people with disabilities

Currently, over a billion people, including children (or about 15% of the world’s population), are estimated to be living with disability, and this figure is going to increase to beyond two billion by 2050. People with disabilities generally experience poorer levels of health, fewer achievements in education, fewer economic opportunities, and higher rates of poverty. Artificial intelligence and 5G can make major contributions towards the assistance of people with disabilities, so they can achieve a good quality of life. In this paper, an overview of machine learning and 5G for people with disabilities is provided. For this purpose, the proposed 5G network slicing architecture for disabled people is introduced. Different application scenarios and their main benefits are considered to illustrate the interaction of machine learning and 5G. Critical challenges have been identified and addressed.This work has been supported by the Agencia Estatal de Investigación of Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación of Spain under project PID2019-108713RB-C51 MCIN/ AEI /10.13039/501100011033.Postprint (published version

Intelligent Personal Assistant in Business-Context: Key-feature Evaluation for User Acceptance

Background: The usage of intelligent personal assistants (IPA), such as Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant is increasing significantly, and voice-interaction is relevant for workflows in a business context. Objectives: This research aims to determine IPA characteristics to evaluate the usefulness of specific functions in a simulated production system of an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software. A new function called explanation-mode is introduced to the scientific community and business world. Methods/Approach: As part of a design science research, an artefact, i.e. an add-on for speech-interaction in business software, was developed and evaluated using a survey among ERP users and researchers. Results: In the area of IPA-features, the search-function and speech input for textual fields were recognised as most useful. The newly introduced feature, the explanation mode, was positively received too. There is no significant correlation between the usefulness of features and participant-characteristics, affinity to technology or previous experience with IPAs in a private context, which is in line with previous studies in the private environment leading to the conclusion that the task attraction is the most important element for usefulness. Conclusions: Most of the participants agreed that the speech-input is not able to fully substitute standard input devices, such as a keyboard or a mouse, so the IPA is recognised as an addition to traditional input methods. The usefulness is rated high especially for speech-input for long text fields, calling up masks and search-functions

User Notification Interface Using Internet of Things Devices

Many household appliances or other devices provide alerts and/or notifications that notify people when certain events occur or when certain activities have been completed such as when the washer/dryer/dishwasher is completed, the oven is preheated, or the refrigerator is left open. People also want to wake up in time for work using an alarm clock. Therefore, notifications and alerts are critical to a user journey in various types of products. However, a conventional device does its own alerts and notifications, usually by a low-quality speaker making a generic alert that a user has come to associate with that particular make/model of device. This is a problem because users have to deal with low-quality, non-customizable notifications with usually fixed volumes. If the user is not within “earshot” of the particular appliance, the user may not receive the notification

Mixing Modalities of 3D Sketching and Speech for Interactive Model Retrieval in Virtual Reality

Sketch and speech are intuitive interaction methods that convey complementary information and have been independently used for 3D model retrieval in virtual environments. While sketch has been shown to be an effective retrieval method, not all collections are easily navigable using this modality alone. We design a new challenging database for sketch comprised of 3D chairs where each of the components (arms, legs, seat, back) are independently colored. To overcome this, we implement a multimodal interface for querying 3D model databases within a virtual environment. We base the sketch on the state-of-the-art for 3D Sketch Retrieval, and use a Wizard-of-Oz style experiment to process the voice input. In this way, we avoid the complexities of natural language processing which frequently requires fine-tuning to be robust. We conduct two user studies and show that hybrid search strategies emerge from the combination of interactions, fostering the advantages provided by both modalities

Unfold—An interactive experience on mixed reality platform to solve communication problems faced by children with ASD in the age group of 4-7 years.

Improving communication with a child with ASD has become an indispensable need in order to make the life smooth for the special child. Research has shown that communication gets driven by mood dynamics, non-verbal interactions, gestural communication and expressions. With the growth in technology, mixed reality and eye tracking are playing a major role in imparting experiences and making us learn about an environment without having to physically be in them. This research work explores how mixed reality can take a child with ASD through an experience that could help them open up and communicate well with others both with and without ASD. A series of training involved aims at an interaction and understanding gestures of others followed by initial training with child himself and animated creature through interaction. This overall experience integrates interactive play and human gestures in the way it happens in the real world. This will train and help enhance their willingness to share, interact and communicate with others besides training the motor skills. The resulting interactive environment addresses communication problem by introduction of a communicative and adaptive medium between a child with ASD and others

Emerging issues and current trends in assistive technology use 2007-1010: practising, assisting and enabling learning for all

Following an earlier review in 2007, a further review of the academic literature relating to the uses of assistive technology (AT) by children and young people was completed, covering the period 2007-2011. As in the earlier review, a tripartite taxonomy: technology uses to train or practise, technology uses to assist learning and technology uses to enable learning, was used in order to structure the findings. The key markers for research in this field and during these three years were user involvement, AT on mobile mainstream devices, the visibility of AT, technology for interaction and collaboration, new and developing interfaces and inclusive design principles. The paper concludes by locating these developments within the broader framework of the Digital Divide