Azure

Making a extra accessible world with Azure AI

At Microsoft, we’re impressed by how synthetic intelligence is remodeling organizations of all sizes, empowering them to reimagine what’s attainable. AI has immense potential to unlock options to a few of society’s most urgent challenges.

One problem is that in keeping with the World Well being Affiliation, globally, only one in 10 individuals with a incapacity have entry to assistive applied sciences and merchandise. We consider that AI options can have a profound impression on this group. To satisfy this want, we purpose to democratize AI to make it simpler for each developer to construct accessibility into their apps and companies, throughout language, speech, and imaginative and prescient.

In view of the upcoming Bett Present in London, we’re shining a light-weight on how Immersive Reader enhances studying comprehension for individuals no matter their age or capacity, and we’re excited to share how Azure AI is broadly enabling builders to construct accessible purposes that empower everybody.

Empowering readers of all skills

Immersive Reader is an Azure Cognitive Service that helps customers of any age and studying capacity with options like studying aloud, translating languages, and focusing consideration via highlighting and different design parts. Hundreds of thousands of educators and college students already use Immersive Reader to beat studying and language obstacles.

The Younger Ladies’s Management College of Astoria, New York, brings collectively an unbelievable variety of scholars with completely different backgrounds and studying types. The lecturers at The Younger Ladies’s Management College help many sorts of learners, together with college students who wrestle with textual content comprehension attributable to studying variations, or language learners who could not perceive the first language of the classroom. The varsity needed to empower all college students, no matter their background or studying types, to develop their confidence and love for studying and writing.

 

Academics at The Younger Ladies’s Management College turned to Immersive Reader and an Azure AI companion, Buncee, as they seemed for methods to create a extra inclusive and fascinating classroom. Buncee allows college students and lecturers to create and share interactive multimedia tasks. With the mixing of Immersive Reader, college students who’re dyslexic can profit from options that assist focus consideration of their Buncee shows, whereas those that are simply studying the English language can have content material translated to them of their native language.

Like Buncee, firms together with Canvas, Wakelet, ThingLink, and Nearpod are additionally making content material extra accessible with Immersive Reader integration. To see the complete listing of companions, go to our Immersive Reader Companions web page. Uncover how one can begin embedding Immersive Reader into your apps in the present day. To be taught extra about how Immersive Reader and different accessibility instruments are fostering inclusive lecture rooms, go to our EDU weblog.

Breaking communication obstacles

Azure AI can be making conversations, lectures, and conferences extra accessible to people who find themselves deaf or arduous of listening to. By enabling conversations to be transcribed and translated in real-time, people can comply with and totally have interaction with shows.

The Balavidyalaya College in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India teaches speech and language abilities to younger kids who’re deaf or arduous of listening to. The varsity not too long ago held a world convention with a whole bunch of alumni, college students, college, and oldsters. With stay captioning and translation powered by Azure AI, attendees had been capable of comply with conversations of their native languages, whereas the shows got in English.

Study how one can simply combine multi-language help into your personal apps with Speech Translation, and see the know-how in motion with Translator, with help for greater than 60 languages, in the present day.

Partaking learners in new methods

We not too long ago introduced the Customized Neural Voice functionality of Textual content to Speech, which allows prospects to construct a novel voice, ranging from only a few minutes of coaching audio.

The Beijing Hongdandan Visually Impaired Service Heart leads the best way in making use of this know-how to empower customers in unbelievable methods. Hongdandan produces academic audiobooks that includes the voice of Lina, China’s first blind broadcaster, utilizing Customized Neural Voice. Whereas creating audiobooks could be a time-consuming course of, Customized Neural Voice permits Lina to supply high-quality audiobooks at scale, enabling Hongdandan to help over 105 faculties for the blind in China like by no means earlier than.

“We had been amazed by how shortly Azure AI may reproduce Lina’s voice in such a natural-sounding approach along with her speech knowledge, enabling us to create academic audiobooks far more shortly. We had been additionally extremely impressed by Microsoft’s dedication to defending Lina’s voice and identification.”—Xin Zeng, Government Director at Hongdandan

Study how one can give your apps a brand new voice with Textual content to Speech.

Making the world seen for everybody

In response to the Worldwide Company for the Prevention of Blindness, greater than 250 million individuals are blind or have low imaginative and prescient throughout the globe. Final month, in celebration of the United Nations Worldwide Day of Individuals with Disabilities, Seeing AI, a free iOS app that describes close by individuals, textual content, and objects, expanded help to 5 new languages. The extra language help for Spanish, Japanese, German, French, and Dutch makes it attainable for hundreds of thousands of blind or low imaginative and prescient people to learn paperwork, have interaction with individuals round them, hear descriptions of their environment of their native language, and far more. All of that is made attainable with Azure AI.

Attempt Seeing AI in the present day or lengthen imaginative and prescient capabilities to your personal apps utilizing Pc Imaginative and prescient and Customized Imaginative and prescient.

Become involved

We’re humbled and impressed by what people and organizations are undertaking in the present day with Azure AI applied sciences. We are able to’t wait to see how you’ll proceed to construct on these applied sciences to unlock new prospects and design extra accessible experiences. Get began in the present day with a free trial.

Take a look at our AI for Accessibility program to be taught extra about how firms are harnessing the facility of AI to amplify capabilities for the hundreds of thousands of individuals world wide with a incapacity.

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