Accessibility is Innovation

To celebrate the 12th anniversary of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, we created a video to show what's possible when Accessibility is a priority. We partnered with copywriter and disability activist Lucrecia Gómez Boschetti from Netflix's "División Palermo" to tell the story of how, throughout history, people with disabilities have contributed to many useful inventions that have improved the quality of life for everyone.  

It matters to me. My arms became paralyzed when I was 22 due to Motor Neuron Disease, which can progressively worsen over time. Most of the world is not designed with the notion that everyone becomes disabled at multiple points in their lives. I devoted my life to redesigning the world so that everyone has the chance to achieve more. I can live my mission through my role as Director of Inclusive Design at Microsoft because of technology. The transition to disabled was made easier because I was already familiar with accessibility tools available in mainstream technology throughout my life. I wrote this blog using Microsoft speech recognition technology which millions use daily. 

Remember, Accessibility is not only a matter of equality but also a source of creativity that can benefit everyone. It drives innovation by challenging us to think differently and creatively about solving problems and meeting people’s needs. Many originate from humble beginnings, far back into history books.  

Let’s dig in. Here are some of the stories behind the inventions highlighted in the video.  

Text recognition 

Optical character recognition (OCR), also known as text recognition, is a technology that extracts text from digital imagery like photos and scans. OCR development goes back to the early 20th century when inventors such as Edmund Fournier d'Albe and Emanuel Goldberg worked with Blind twins Mary & Margaret Jameson to develop devices that could scan printed text and convert it into audible signals. These devices, called Optophones or “reading machines,” provided another way for blind individuals to read independently. 

However, these devices had many limitations as they were bulky and expensive. The development of OCR for people with disabilities took a major leap forward in the 1970s when Ray Kurzweil invented the Kurzweil Reading Machine (KRM). It was the first device to scan an entire text page and convert it into natural-sounding speech. In partnership with the National Federation of the Blind, a portable KRM was created that allowed blind individuals to read any printed material easily and comfortably. These inventions were the precursors of modern text-to-speech systems used for technologies like augmented reality software and much more.  

Speech recognition 

Speech recognition technology allows computers to convert human speech to text for various purposes. They were created in the 1950s and 1960s at Bell Labs. These systems could only recognize a few words or digits spoken by a single speaker, requiring extensive training and calibration to work properly. 

From the 1970s through the early 1990s, speech recognition technology improved significantly with the advances in artificial intelligence, signal processing, and hardware. Researchers developed systems that could recognize more words, handle different accents and dialects, and cope with background noise. Two instrumental researchers were Ray Kurzweil and Microsoft’s Azure Chief Technology Officer Xuedong Huang, their passion for accessibility clear.

Now speech recognition is integrated into most technology, from cars to thermostats.  

Speech recognition is not perfect, especially for those with speech disabilities. Excited that Microsoft, along with Apple, Google, Meta, and Google, has teamed up with the University of Illinois to make speech recognition more inclusive of diverse speech patterns. Better Together. 

Speech synthesis  

Speech synthesis enables a computer to produce human-like speech. The opposite of speech-to-text! While early speech synthesizers relied on mechanical sound production (attempting to recreate the physics of human speech), the shift to electronic production of sound in the late 1950s and into the 1960s accelerated progress in this space. In 1976, speech synthesis moved from large, powerful computers to portable devices like the TSI Speech+ portable talking calculator designed for use by the blind and low-vision community. 

In the intervening decades, speech synthesis technology advanced. The early computerized voices immortalized in films like 2001: A Space Odyssey have been replaced with more natural-sounding synthetic voices. Today found in nearly every computing platform these days, from screen readers to virtual assistants to Augmentative and Alternative Communication to “read aloud” services. People losing their ability to speak through disability can preserve their voice (a process called “voice banking”) to continue to sound like themselves.

Captioning 

Captioning is adding text to a video or audio file describing what is being said and heard. They benefit deaf or hard of hearing and people with different learning styles, language preferences, or environmental constraints like noise in your environment. 

Captions have a long history of being influenced by disabled people who advocated for their rights and needs. The first recorded captioning of a film was in 1947 by deaf actor Emerson Romero.

In the 1970s and 1980s, deaf consumers and organizations pushed for more captioned programming on television and the development of Closed Captioning technology that allowed viewers to turn captions on or off. On March 16, 1980, the first, closed-captioned television series was broadcasted, which were ABC Sunday Night Movie (ABC), The Wonderful World of Disney (NBC), and Masterpiece Theatre (PBS). In 1990, the Americans with Disabilities  Act mandated that businesses and public accommodations provide auxiliary aids, such as captions, to ensure effective communication with people with disabilities. 

Today, captions are widely available on various communication platforms like Microsoft Teams, thanks to the efforts of disabled people and their allies. They are also popular with people without hearing disabilities with some studies showing that over half of people using streaming video services have opted to turn them on. 

Happy GAAD! 

The possibilities for accessibility are endless. That’s what makes this field exciting, but we need to do more. Society was not built for disability, and humans face many challenges, such as cognitive overload, lack of resources, time constraints, and competition. Generative AI can help. It can power productivity by augmenting a creator's skills with powerful tools and techniques. It’s early days for these technologies, but we're excited to see the rate that inclusive innovations develop with the help of generative AI products like Copilot.  

Accessibility is the driving force behind many of the innovations we use daily. Let’s celebrate that as we also look forward to the opportunities ahead… for everyone. 

Learn more about creating accessible products at Accessibility Resources & Training | Microsoft Accessibility 

*Many individuals contributed to the development of these innovations that were not mentioned. We've only highlighted a few contributors to keep the article short and not overload the reader.