-- There are still many museums that present accessibility barriers, particularly regarding perceptual, cultural, and cognitive aspects. This is especially evident in low-density population areas. The aim of the ROBSO-PM project is to to improve the accessibility of small museums with the use of social robots and social telepresence robots, focusing on three museums as a case study: the Museum of the Holy Shroud in T urin, a small but globally known institution, and two lesser-known mountain museums, the Museum of the Champlas du Col Carnival, and the Pragelato Museum of Alpine Peoples' Costumes and Traditions. The project explores two main applications for robots: as guides to support inclusive visits for foreign or disabled visitors, and as telepresence tools allowing people with limited mobility to access museums remotely. From a research perspective, key topics include storytelling, robot personality, empathy, personalization, and, in the case of telepresence, collaboration between the robot and the person, with clearly defined roles and autonomy.

Significant improvements in technology in recent years have created more advanced assistive tools and services that allow people with sensory impairments to lead more independent and fulfilling lives. While there will always be a need for traditional assistive devices such as white canes, Braille signage for the visually impaired, or closed-captioning services for the hearing-impaired, these new devices, apps, and underlying technological approaches are helping to create a more inclusive world. The number of people who benefit from technological improvements to assistive technologies is notable. According to the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness, 43 million people around the world were living with blindness as of 2021. Meanwhile, hearing loss currently affects more than 1.5 billion people worldwide, of whom 430 million have moderate or higher levels of hearing loss in their better-hearing ear, according to the World Report on Hearing, published in 2021 by the World Health Organization.

To foster the next level of accessibility and inclusion, it's time to start investing our efforts into developing more sophisticated cognitive AI machines. Developing more sophisticated forms of cognitive AI is the key to expanding global accessibility and broadening the scope of inclusion. In fact, we already see unprecedented language coverage. Flint Capital notes that recent research shows the number of machine translation language pairs has soared from 16,000 to about 100,000 in a single year. On top of this, Flint Capital also notes that the global cognitive computing market is projected to surge to $72.26 billion by 2027. We already see huge gains with the rapid development of new AI tech that pushes the existing limits of voice synthesis and speech recognition.