AI-Based Disability Tools and Resources

AccessNow is a mobile app that utilizes AI to crowdsource and map accessibility information about public spaces worldwide. It helps individuals with disabilities find and share information about accessible transportation options, ramps, elevators, and other amenities, making public spaces more inclusive.

This innovative AI-powered tool is designed to generate concise, clear, and contextually relevant alt text for images. It aims to enhance web accessibility for visually impaired users while also streamlining the process of creating informative alt text for content creators and developers.

Article Friend is a resource utilizing ChatGPT that is designed for researchers interested in generating accessible, aphasia-friendly versions of their research for people with aphasia.

Autimo is a thoughtfully designed application aimed at assisting individuals with autism in recognizing emotions and facial expressions. It achieves this through engaging identification games, including pairing, intruder, and guessing games, complemented by visual support.

Empowering deaf & hard-of-hearing people and inclusive organizations with the best live captioning solution for any situation.

Powered by OpenAI’s new GPT-4 language model, which contains a dynamic new image-to-text generator. Users can send images via the app to an AI-powered Virtual Volunteer, which will answer any question about that image and provide instantaneous visual assistance for a wide variety of tasks.

BlindSquare is the world’s most widely used accessible GPS-app developed for the blind, deafblind and partially sighted. Paired with third-party navigation apps, BlindSquare’s self-voicing app delivers detailed points of interest and intersections for safe, reliable travel both outside and inside,

Braci helps deaf and hard of hearing individuals by utilizing a smartphone's microphone to detect and recognize important sounds in the environment, such as fire alarms, doorbells, or emergency alerts.

Braina is a multi-functional AI software that allows you to interact with your computer using voice commands in most of the languages of the world. Moreover, using Braina's Android App or iOS App you can interact with your computer using your voice from anywhere in your house over a WiFi network.

This Chrome extension adds keyboard shortcuts to the interface, which allows users to talk to and hear AI-generated responses in the site.

Descript provides nearly instant audio and video transcriptions that you can add captions, translate into multiple languages, edit to remove filler words, and regenerate dialogue without re-recording,

Envision empowers people who are blind or have low vision to access everyday visual information for themselves by detecting objects and scenes in their surroundings as well as print.

Evelity provides better orientation and navigation for people with disabilities, or in disabling situations, in complex places of everyday life, using a mobility assistance application

A Netherlands-based start-up has developed an artificial intelligence (AI) powered smartphone app for deaf and mute people, which it says offers a low-cost and superior approach to translating sign language into text and speech in real time.

Goblin Tools is a collection of small, simple, single-task tools, mostly designed to help neurodivergent people with tasks they find overwhelming or difficult. AI powered tools such as Goblin.tools can help alleviate any uncertainty around the meaning behind a message. They allow the user to copy the message or email into the tool, and using AI, the tool gives an overview of how the message reads.

Google Audio Overview provides searchers with an audio overview of their search results, and the ability to then click through to learn more.

As an Android app for people who are blind or have low vision, Lookout helps provide info about your surroundings. It uses your device's camera and sensors to recognize objects and text but also describes what it finds in the viewfinder.

The Keeogo walking assistance device is a smart powered orthosis that helps you take healthier steps and walk more.

Live Transcribe & Sound Notifications makes everyday conversations and surrounding sounds more accessible among people who are deaf and hard of hearing, using just your Android phone or tablet.

Natural Reader converts text, documents, PDFs, and images to speech in a multitude of languages and voices.

Accessibility advocate and developer Cameron Cundiff created a Non-Visual Desktop Access (NVDA) add-in that provides semantically rich image descriptions of any website, software product, or desktop icon.

OrCam is another revolutionary AI-based device for blind and visually impaired people that conveys visual information instantly with voice commands. The device can read texts aloud from books, newspapers, smartphone screens, or any other printed or digital surface, recognize faces, identify products, colors, and other visuals. It helps blind people do many things on their own, bringing a new level of independence.

Parrotron makes it easier for users with atypical speech to talk to and be understood by other people and by speech interfaces, with its end-to-end speech conversion approach more likely to reproduce the user’s intended speech.

Text a loved one, get a caregiver's attention, or laugh along with friends. Project Activate is designed for people who are unable to speak or use technology with their hands, including those who have ALS, muscular dystrophy, cerebral palsy, or multiple sclerosis, and those who have had a brainstem stroke or cervical spinal cord injury

Project Guideline is a collaboration between Google Research and Guiding Eyes for the Blind that enabled people with visual impairments (e.g., blindness and low-vision) to walk, jog, and run independently. Using only a Google Pixel phone and headphones, Project Guideline leverages on-device machine learning (ML) to navigate users along outdoor paths marked with a painted line.

Proloquo2Go is an award-winning alternative and augmentative communication app that enables non-speaking children and adults to express themselves confidently and initiate conversations.

The ReWalk Personal Exoskeleton offers patients with spinal cord injuries (SCI) a new level of independence with life-changing robotics.

Rogervoice is the call caption solution for your smartphone. The app transcribes your calls so you can read your conversations in real time, directly on your mobile phone.

Seeing AI is a free app that narrates the world around you. Designed with and for the blind and low vision community, this ongoing research project harnesses the power of AI to open up the visual world. Seeing AI assists with daily tasks from reading, to describing photos, to identifying products, and more. The app continues to evolve as we hear from the community and AI research advances

SensusAccess is a one-stop self-service, alternate media and document remediation service for educational institutions. SensusAccess allows students, faculty, staff, and alumni to automatically convert documents into a range of alternate media including audio books (MP3 and DAISY), e-books (EPUB, EPUB3 and Mobi), digital Braille, digital large-print, and BeeLine Reader.

Sesame Enable created hands free, head control access for smartphones, tablets and computers.

Signly adds sign language to websites. People for whom sign language is their first, preferred or only language have diverse literacy levels. Signly challenges the idea that English-only websites adequately serve sign language users – some people don’t or can’t easily use English.

Learn American Sign Language with a webcam and AI.

Sonix uses AI to transcribe both audio and video content into text and can also translate transcripts into 54 languages in minutes.

This text to voice generator allows users with visual impairment or dyslexia to have text read to them.

Starkey Genesis AI 24 is a state-of-the-art hearing aid system that uses AI that adjusts to a user's listening environment to eliminate background noise, and can monitor heart rate, physical activity, and in the event of a fall, send fall alerts.

A tablet communication device that uses eye tracking to enable users with conditions like cerebral palsy, Rett syndrome, or ALS to communicate and live more independently.

TranscribeGlass can subtitle conversations in nearly real time and will soon be able to translate languages and tell you when the person you’re talking to you is feeling socially awkward.

Voiceitt has developed speech recognition for non-standard speech: opening the world of voice technology for people with speech disabilities, aging adults, and accented speakers.

Waymap is a mobile navigation app that uses smartphone sensors and user steps for accurate navigation by providing audio directions and dynamic route adjustments in real time.

Wheelmap is a map for finding wheelchair accessible places. The map works similar to Wikipedia: Anyone can contribute and mark public places around the world according to their wheelchair accessibility.

AlterEgo’s neural-interface device is non-invasive and is being tested in people with multiple sclerosis and motor neuron disease.

Designing for inclusion means more than making things easier to read. It means ensuring people receive the intended message rather than just a readable one.

Visually-impaired people are finding new independence with AI glasses. "CBS Saturday Morning" meets Emeline Lakrout, an active, visually-impaired New Yorker who has found new ways to use AI glasses to her advantage.

To prevent an unjust future, disabled people must become key stakeholders in the development of artificial intelligence.

Seven researchers at the University of Washington tested AI tools’ utility for accessibility. Though researchers found cases in which the tools were helpful, they also found significant problems.

This paper has two main objectives: 1) provide an overview of AI systems and machine learning, including disability bias, for accessibility professionals and related non-development roles; and 2) discuss methods for building accessible AI systems inclusively to mitigate bias.

‘Responsible Tech’ influencers including data scientists, AI (artificial intelligence) developers and HR leaders are increasingly seeking to address data biases built into AI Recruitment tools. These champions care about avoiding discrimination based on gender, race, or age – while still discriminating against these same diverse candidates who also happen to have a disability.

This step-by-step guide in eight simple parts covers principles of aphasia-friendly written communication (e.g., use of plain language and supportive icons and images) and makes use of freely available resources. We also introduce a prototype tool—Article Friend—that automatically generates aphasia-friendly abstracts to jump-start this process for researchers; this preliminary tool serves as a proof of concept that creating accessible research can be an efficient, sustainable practice in the scientific publishing landscape.

To address communication barriers, researchers from the College of Engineering and Computer Science at Florida Atlantic University conducted a first-of-its-kind study focused on recognizing American Sign Language alphabet gestures using computer vision.

This vision implant produces a form of “artificial vision” that lets some patients read text and do crosswords, according to a report published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Researchers in the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology found that natural language processing tools, a form of artificial intelligence, often contain biases against people with disabilities.

One area where AI has already proven successful is in improving the day-to-day lives of people with disabilities. Examples include a brain-spinal cord interface that helps people relearn how to walk, AI-enabled voice assistants (such as Olga Phone and Google Assistant) which make it easier for visually impaired people to use their smartphones, learning algorithms that enable computers to understand users’ intentions and anticipate a command, etc

Tech offers promise to help yet too often perpetuates ableism, say researchers. It doesn’t have to be this way.

A man with a severe speech disability is able to speak expressively and sing using a brain implant that translates his neural activity into words almost instantly.