Apple’s recently released short film, The Greatest, is a fleeting snapshot of the ordinary lives of people with disabilities. It features pianist Matthew Whitaker, among several people who live their lives with the help of technology.
But beneath the pretty packaging, there’s an important message: assistive technology has an impact every day. The video captures the essentials of living with a disability.
On screen, viewers watch a day in the life of seven Apple users with disabilities whose lives mesh seamlessly with the company’s technology and accessible settings.
People with impairments who regularly use technology, including smartphones and tablets, produced the video.
It emphasizes, for instance, how Whitaker can locate the stage entrance using the iPhone’s Assistive Touch and Door Detection features, proving that persons with disabilities can use this technology.
People with disabilities can share their lived experience through this advertisement, providing a more complex, colorful explanation that not everyone may be aware of.
Notifications from Apple Watch Sound Recognition are also shown along with how they affect people’s lives for the better.
Our stages of development are closely related to those of the internet.
With the aid of assistive technology, persons who have specific problems can function in circumstances where they wouldn’t typically.
This Apple film highlights a more general truth: products must be designed with the experiences of people with disabilities in mind.
This campaign to promote accessibility is in honor of Disability Day.
Finding “transformative solutions for inclusive development: the role of innovation in driving an accessible and equitable world” is how one event is described online.
It serves as a reminder of a fundamental fact: persons with disabilities have struggled to speak out forcefully in these unconventional settings.
Advancing Google technology to include people with disabilities
Google’s EMEA head of accessibility and disability inclusion, Christopher Patnoe, concurred: “Our products are the result of years of research.”
“It’s a full process. Years of working with persons with impairments and engaging with the community.”
In conjunction with Disability Day, Google also announced plans to open its first specifically dedicated accessibility discovery center in the UK to advance development of accessible technologies.
Additionally, a guarantee has been made to give out grants totaling over £1 million to assist disabled individuals with safety knowledge, web technologies, and the Project Relate app.
To make it easier and more effective for persons with non-standard speech to communicate, it was recently launched in beta form in the UK.
The software is a definite indication that Google is paying attention to people with disabilities and has the ability to fundamentally alter how someone with a speech problem navigates the world.
The repeat feature, which allows you to repeat what you’ve spoken using a crystal-clear synthesized voice, is one of the app’s most famous features.
Email was once a revolution in communication, as Patnoe said, so technology will continue to develop and change until it is widely used.
For every user, Google wants to normalize the use of all technologies.
It felt “strange” and was excessively pricey in earlier decades.
It’s becoming commonplace and as easy as pressing a button.
The younger generation might not even need to consciously try.
However, as he put it, “we’re never done” since there is always more to accomplish and Google wants to keep identifying problems and seeking solutions.
Given the tense connection between some people in the IT industry and the disability community, the timing is ideal for such a topic, even if its almost utopian vision is a little alarming.
Twitter has started to take important steps to accommodate all disabled users as a result of pressure from activists and other disabled users.
The addition of “alt-text” badges on all images, for instance, serves as a reminder that an image description is a minimum.
So when the whole Twitter accessibility staff was abruptly sacked, it was a personal setback for many.
Noam Bardin, co-founder of The Post (a Twitter competitor still in beta), stated in a post that accessibility was not a major issue because it would divert attention from other areas, which made the problem worse.
Many persons with impairments could pass up using a social media site that could help them access the bigger world because it is less significant.
Accessible technology only needs to function; it doesn’t need to be stylish or attractive.
For people who are paralyzed, scientists are also creating tools, prosthetic limbs, and brain implants to improve their quality of life.
For instance, a team of researchers at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio has tested and proven effective a device that transmits brain impulses to electrodes inserted in a paralyzed man’s arm, allowing him to restore arm motion.
One of the founders of BrainGate, the organization that collaborated with Ohio University academics to build the interface, John Donoghue, said: “The fact that we were able to get a person to regain control of their body by stimulating muscles is extraordinary.”
The findings of earlier tests on the topic have likewise been promising.
For instance, participants had no trouble controlling the robotic arms or the computer cursor.
Additionally, a man from Ohio with partially paralyzed arms was able to open and shut his fist with the use of external electrodes attached to his forearm and a brain implant.
In a remarkable development, researchers at the UC San Francisco Weill Neuroscience Institute who are developing a brain-controlled prosthetic limb demonstrated how machine learning methods assisted a paralyzed person in learning to move a computer cursor.
This utilised brain activity without need frequent daily updates, which was a necessity of all prior brain-computer interface (BCI) initiatives.
“Although the BCI sector has made tremendous strides recently, current systems were unable to take use of the brain’s natural learning processes since they needed to be reset and recalibrated daily.
It’s comparable to having someone start learning to ride a bike all over again “Karunesh Ganguly, an associate professor in the UCSF Department of Neurology and the study’s primary author, said.
Or, according to the invention’s creators, this prosthetic hand that can grip and move like a regular hand might restore more than 90% of a person’s functional range after an upper limb amputation.
The prosthetic hand known as Hannes was developed by an international team of orthopedists, industrial designers, and patients in collaboration with researchers at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia in Italy.
To help people regain control after an amputation, the limb was created to precisely mimic the size, weight, look, and natural grasping motion of a human hand.
The working characteristics of the hand, such as precision and movement speed, can also be changed via a mobile phone app and a Bluetooth connection.
Therefore, as technology advances, scientists are creating solutions and tools for those with disabilities.
Their lives are made simpler by this.
