Special Time: 11:00 AM, Zoom Colloquium: OKO - app that uses computer vision to assist blind and visually impaired people

Abstract:"AYES is a Belgian-based company that is co-founded by three computer scientists. Our journey started when our visually impaired family friend, Bram, told us about the challenges he faced while navigating outdoors. Quite quickly we realized that current assistive technologies are outdated and could benefit from artificial intelligence. For that reason, we started developing a mobile application, called OKO, that uses the smartphone camera and computer vision to assist people in their daily lives. Crossing the street is a very stressful task if there is no accessible pedestrian signal installed. For that reason, we've developed a feature capable of detecting the pedestrian traffic light. So far, we have identified 70.000+ safe crossings. Our goal now is to bring this technology to the USA since a lot of cities are experiencing difficulties with installing accessible pedestrian signals. In recent months we've also added public transport recognition which identifies the bus number and destination to get people on the right bus. In the future, we'll add more computer vision-related features to deliver an even better navigation experience." Improving Zoom accessibility for people with hearing impairments People with hearing impairments often use lipreading and speechreading to improve speech comprehension. This approach is helpful but only works if the speaker’s face and mouth are clearly visible. For the benefit of people with hearing impairments on Zoom calls, please enable your device’s camera whenever you are speaking on Zoom, and face the camera while you speak. (Feel free to disable your camera when you aren’t speaking.)