At its 14th Capability summit, which kicks off immediately, Microsoft is highlighting developments and collaborations throughout its portfolio of assistive merchandise. A lot of that’s round Azure AI, together with options announced yesterday like AI-powered audio descriptions and the Azure AI studio that higher permits builders with disabilities to create machine-learning purposes. It additionally confirmed off new updates like extra languages and richer AI-generated descriptions for its Seeing AI tool, in addition to new playbooks providing tips for finest practices in areas like constructing accessible campuses and better psychological well being help.
The corporate can be previewing a characteristic referred to as “Communicate For Me,” which is coming later this yr. Very similar to Apple’s Personal Voice, Communicate For Me may help these with ALS and different speech disabilities to make use of customized neural voices to speak. Work on this venture has been ongoing “for a while” with companions just like the non-profit ALS organization Team Gleason, and Microsoft stated it’s “dedicated to creating certain this expertise is used for good and plan to launch later within the yr.” The corporate additionally shared that it’s working with Reply ALS and ALS Remedy Improvement Institute (TDI) to “virtually double the medical and genomic knowledge accessible for analysis.”
One of the vital accessibility updates coming this month is that Copilot will have new accessibility skills that allow customers to ask the assistant to launch Dwell Caption and Narrator, amongst different assistive instruments. The Accessibility Assistant characteristic announced last year might be accessible immediately within the Insider preview for M365 apps like Phrase, with the corporate saying it will likely be coming “quickly” to Outlook and PowerPoint. Microsoft can be publishing 4 new playbooks immediately, together with a Psychological Well being toolkit, which covers “suggestions for product makers to construct experiences that help psychological well being situations, created in partnership [with] Psychological Well being America.”
Forward of the summit, the corporate’s chief accessibility officer Jenny Lay-Flurrie spoke with Engadget to share better perception across the information in addition to her ideas on generative AI’s position in constructing assistive merchandise.
“In some ways, AI isn’t new,” she stated, including “this chapter is new.” Generative AI could also be all the fashion proper now, however Lay-Flurrie believes that the core precept her group depends on hasn’t modified. “Accountable AI is accessible AI,” she stated.
Nonetheless, generative AI may convey many advantages. “This chapter, although, does unlock some potential alternatives for the accessibility trade and other people with disabilities to have the ability to be extra productive and to make use of expertise to energy their day,” she stated. She highlighted a survey the corporate did with the neurodiverse neighborhood round Microsoft 365 Copilot, and the response of the few hundred individuals who responded was “that is lowering time for me to create content material and it’s shortening that hole between thought and motion,” Lay-Flurrie stated.
The thought of being accountable in embracing new expertise traits when designing for accessibility isn’t removed from Lay-Flurrie’s thoughts. “We nonetheless must be very principled, considerate and if we maintain again, it’s to make it possible for we’re defending these elementary rights of accessibility.”
Elsewhere on the summit, Microsoft is that includes visitor audio system like actor Michelle Williams and its personal worker Katy Jo Wright, discussing psychological well being and their expertise residing with persistent Lyme illness respectively. We will even see Amsterdam’s Rijksmusem share how it used Azure AI’s pc imaginative and prescient and generative AI to supply picture descriptions for over one million items of artwork for guests who’re blind or have low imaginative and prescient.
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