Friday Night AI: “Redefining Access: Can AI Provide Disability Support?”

Recent years have witnessed tremendous progress in AI, with major advances in natural language understanding, image recognition, and speech processing, among others. But are these tools, often built as “one-size-fits-all” solutions, equally useful for the roughly 20% of the population who live with a disability at some point in their lives? Join us for a conversation with AI and accessibility experts on the limitations of AI-powered tools to assist people who are blind or visually impaired, those who stutter, are deaf or hard of hearing, or those with dyslexia or aphasia, and the opportunities we have to turn these tools into personalized, adaptive technologies that can truly meet diverse accessibility needs. With interactive activities developed by graduate student Yara El-Tawil.

Panelists: Anhong Guo, Sile O’Modhrain, Rada Mihalcea

Anhong Guo is an Assistant Professor in Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Michigan, also affiliated with the School of Information. He leads the Human-AI Lab working to develop new assistive technologies for people with disabilities, with the goal of making the real world and the digital world more accessible. He is a Google Research Scholar, a Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Scientist, a Snap Inc. Research Fellow, and a Swartz Innovation Fellow for Entrepreneurship. His lab recently participated in the AADL VISIONS event. More at: https://guoanhong.com

Sile O’Modhrain is a professor in Performing Arts Technology at the school of Music, Theatre and Dance at the University of Michigan, where she also holds an appointment in the School of Information. Her research focuses on human-computer interaction, especially interfaces incorporating haptic and auditory feedback. She earned her master’s degree in music technology from the University of York and her PhD from Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). She has also worked as a sound engineer and producer for BBC Network Radio. In 1994, she received a Fulbright scholarship, and went to Stanford to develop a prototype haptic interface augmenting graphical user interfaces for blind computer users. In 2019, she co-founded NewHaptics with two colleagues from the University of Michigan. The company is developing a full-page braille/tactile display based on microfluidic techniques.

Moderator: Rada Mihalcea is the Janice M. Jenkins Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan and the Director of the Michigan Artificial Intelligence Lab. Her research interests are in natural language processing, with a focus on multimodal processing and computational social sciences. She is an ACM Fellow, a AAAI Fellow, and served as ACL President (2018-2022 Vice/Past). She is the recipient of a Sarah Goddard Power award (2019) for her contributions to diversity in science, and the recipient of a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers awarded by President Obama (2009).

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