The idea of "reinventing the wheel" is very often looked down upon in research. But many devices and solutions in the assistive technology (AT) space have been available for nearly half a century and still have not reached most users in low-income countries. Two such examples are refreshable Braille displays, which make digital data accessible in Braille through touch rather than audio, and tactile diagrams, which are critical to helping visually impaired people to pursue subjects, such as science, where diagrams are crucial to understanding the concepts. While accessibility normally refers only to the modality for making information accessible, in the Indian context, it is tightly tied to affordability. No market exists in the AT space in low-income countries, though the need is very high, because the user's ability to pay is either low or non-existent.

We create a virtual 2D tactile array for soft pneumatic actuators using embedded audio components. We detect contact-specific changes in sound modulation to infer tactile information. We evaluate different sound representations and learning methods to detect even small contact variations. We demonstrate the acoustic tactile sensor array by the example of a PneuFlex actuator and use a Braille display to individually control the contact of 29x4 pins with the actuator's 90x10 mm palmar surface. Evaluating the spatial resolution, the acoustic sensor localizes edges in x- and y-direction with a root-mean-square regression error of 1.67 mm and 0.0 mm, respectively. Even light contacts of a single Braille pin with a lifting force of 0.17 N are measured with high accuracy. Finally, we demonstrate the sensor's sensitivity to complex contact shapes by successfully reading the 26 letters of the Braille alphabet from a single display cell with a classification rate of 88%.

An anonytmous reader quotes TechSpot: Google is looking to improve the web-browsing experience for those with vision conditions by introducing a feature into its Chrome browser that uses machine learning to recognize and describe images. The image description will be generated automatically using the same technology that drives Google Lens... The text descriptions use the phrase "appears to be" to let users know that it is a description of an image. So, for example, Chrome might say, "Appears to be a motorized scooter." This will be a cue to let the person know that it is a description generated by the AI and may not be completely accurate.

The internet can be a difficult place to navigate for people who are blind or who have low vision. A large portion of content on the internet is visual, and unless website creators use alt text to label their images, it's hard for users of screen readers or Braille displays to know what they show. To address the issue, Google has announced a new feature for Chrome which will use machine learning to recognize images and offer text descriptions of what they show. It is based on the same technology which lets users search for images by keyword, and the description of the image is auto-generated. "The unfortunate state right now is that there are still millions and millions of unlabeled images across the web," said Laura Allen, a senior program manager on the Chrome accessibility team.

Mobile devices have become incredibly popular for their ability to weave modern conveniences such as Internet access and social networking into the fabric of daily life. For people with disabilities, however, these devices have the potential to unlock unprecedented new possibilities for communication, navigation and independence. This emergence of mobile "assistive" technologies, influenced heavily by the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) 25 years ago, marks a major step forward for people with disabilities. The U.S. Congress passed the ADA in July 1990 as a civil rights law to protect people with disabilities from discrimination. The act requires that businesses, schools and government agencies must follow certain requirements to ensure people have equal access to their services and facilities.

Earlier this week, Facebook updated its iOS app offering voice descriptions of photographs uploaded by its users. A big step forward for accessibility, but it's far from the only company looking to make the world more inclusive to the visually impaired. In fact, rapid advances in artificial intelligence, machine vision and image-recognition technology are opening up the digital world to the blind and visually impaired – and helping them to interact with their surroundings. One interesting example is Austrian start-up BLITAB, which has created the first ever tactile tablet for blind and visually impaired people, dubbed "the iPad for the blind". As Kristina Tsvetanova, co-founder & CEO at BLITAB Technology, explains, the device looks similar to an ebook but displays small physical bubbles instead of using a screen, which means users can view whole pages of braille text at once, without any mechanical elements.

Earlier this week, Facebook updated its iOS app offering voice descriptions of photographs uploaded by its users. A big step forward for accessibility, but it's far from the only company looking to make the world more inclusive to the visually impaired. In fact, rapid advances in artificial intelligence, machine vision and image-recognition technology are opening up the digital world to the blind and visually impaired – and helping them to interact with their surroundings. One interesting example is Austrian start-up BLITAB, which has created the first ever tactile tablet for blind and visually impaired people, dubbed "the iPad for the blind". As Kristina Tsvetanova, co-founder & CEO at BLITAB Technology, explains, the device looks similar to an ebook but displays small physical bubbles instead of using a screen, which means users can view whole pages of braille text at once, without any mechanical elements.

Rapid advances in artificial intelligence, machine vision and image-recognition technology are opening up the digital world to the blind and visually impaired – and helping them to interact with their surroundings. One interesting example is Austrian start-up BLITAB, which has created the first ever tactile tablet for blind and visually impaired people, dubbed "the iPad for the blind". As Kristina Tsvetanova, co-founder & CEO at BLITAB Technology, explains, the device looks similar to an ebook but displays small physical bubbles instead of using a screen, which means users can view whole pages of braille text at once, without any mechanical elements. "It offers a completely new user experience for braille and non-braille readers via touch navigation, text-to-speech output and Perkins-style keyboard application. It also enables the direct conversion of any text file into braille and obtains information via NFC tags. BLITAB is not just a tablet, it is a platform for all existing and future software applications for blind readers," she says.