Last week, I was able to attend the GSA Interagency Accessibility Forum (IAAF) virtually. I learned about it while doing research for an accessibility series I’m putting together for work. This was my first year attending.
Because I found out about it on Section508.gov, I expected it to be a more learning-based event. Instead, it was more like a professional conference.
I did learn a lot, including about some very interesting technology and tools in the works. But, I was also smacked in the face with my own, unacknowledged, privilege.
I’m aware that Jim and I are highly fortunate we live a comfortable, mostly white, middle-class life and everything that goes with that. What I don’t usually consider is my privilege as a mostly able-bodied person. My vision is still correctable to 20/20 with corrective lenses; I don’t have any hearing loss; I don’t have any speaking disfluencies. Those facts offer me a lot of privilege that I don’t generally think about.
The IAAF, especially on day one, had presentations that made me realize how much I take for granted. We learned about two new applications that are aiming to provide indoor navigation assistance to people with visual disabilities, in development by Lehigh University — presented by Dr. Vinod Namboodiri — the other by NYU — presented by Dr. JohnRoss Rizzo. The latter even warns when there are obstacles in the user’s path and how to avoid them.
We also learned about a Voice AI model — Heard AI — being trained on speech with disfluencies — e.g., stuttering, lengthy pauses — to help with captioning, robotic call processing, AI assistants, etc. Their first version reduced transcription errors by an average of 59.94%.
This was the first time I’d given either issues real thought, in 37 years. I felt — and feel —rather embarrassed about that.
I don’t have the skills necessary to help with development, or to make my own apps. But, I can share the work that other amazing people have done. And, I can keep up my web and document accessibility work and research. In a world that doesn’t generally put accessibility first, I need to make more of an effort.
Have you heard about any of these tools? What about other upcoming technologies or tools? Let me know in the comments! I’d love to hear from you.
Thanks for reading to the end, I hope you enjoyed my post. Make sure to subscribe to my blog or follow me on Instagram so you don’t miss any posts. I generally post at least once a week.
