Artificial intelligence (AI) offers hope for a transformative change in the lives of people with disabilities, granting them greater independence through advancements in image recognition and enabling them to regain lost functions like speech or mobility.
At the end of May, a person with paraplegia in the neck area was able, for the first time, to regain natural control over walking simply by thinking, thanks to the integration of two technologies that reconnect the brain and spinal cord.
Neuralink, a company launched by billionaire Elon Musk in 2016, aims to restore independence to people with paralysis through brain implants, eventually linking the human brain with machines. In late May, U.S. health authorities approved the first human trials of these implants.
On a less dramatic but equally important front, consumer products like smartphones are becoming daily assistive tools, thanks to AI technology. With their cameras, iPhone and Android devices offer applications that identify people and describe objects in the surrounding environment, helping users, for example, locate the nearest door or find a microwave button.
In May, Apple announced the "Live Speech" feature, allowing users to express themselves in written form during phone or video conversations, with real-time text-to-speech conversion visible to the other person in the call.
For people at risk of losing their ability to speak due to neurodegenerative diseases, Apple promises to recreate their voice after just 15 minutes of training (currently available in English only).
Sarah Herrlinger, an Apple executive, told AFP during the VivaTech exhibition that Apple collaborated with an organization founded by American football player Steve Gleason, who suffers from ALS. She noted that one in three people with ALS is at risk of losing their ability to speak.
Herrlinger emphasized that Apple has prioritized accessibility from the start, saying, "We were the first to launch a touch-screen reader in 2009."
In a conversation with AFP, Eve Anderson, Director of Product Accessibility at Google, said, "At Google, we are now promoting generative AI, which holds great promises for accessibility," particularly regarding cognitive impairments.
One of Google's goals is to find solutions to assist people with dyslexia, such as automatic text summaries or suggested responses to emails.
Thanks to an AI program developed by Google DeepMind, the Lookout app allows users to get information about the content of any image on their device.
Eve Anderson explained, "If a tool is created to assist people with disabilities, it will be beneficial for all users." She pointed to the speech recognition and automatic subtitles features on YouTube videos as an example.
The head of the Accessibility Products department at Valentin Haüy Association highlighted that "the solutions proposed by AI" are likely to offer significant independence to blind and visually impaired individuals, often without people even realizing it.
Microsoft’s Seeing AI app, for example, allows users to "explore the content of an image with their fingers," a feature particularly useful when sharing a picture in a WhatsApp group, though people may not always recognize that this is thanks to AI.
With over 15% of the world's population experiencing some form of disability, AI-driven initiatives continue to grow to meet their needs.
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