A new app that describes what an iPhone’s camera can see could prove useful to blind and visually impaired users. Called Seeing AI, the app uses computer vision to provide descriptive aid to users. It can read documents and scan barcodes, beeping at an increasing rate to let users know when their camera is getting…
“But new technologies are emerging that could provide alternative options to people like Mr. Wu.” Multiple banks in China denied an armless citizen a loan because he wasn’t able to provide fingerprints, according to a BBC report. Twenty-five-year-old educator Wu Jianping lost his arms as a child after suffering a serious electrical shock. He’s still able…
A new study from a team of researchers from Stanford, the University of Washington, and Baidu suggests that the transition to speech-based interaction with consumer devices could offer some considerable benefits to users. The study compared text-based entry to dictation in both English and Mandarin Chinese, with the text entered via the Apple iOS’s touchscreen…
Google’s efforts to enhance its speech recognition technology’s ability to understand regional accents could be much more expansive than originally thought, according to a new report from The Verge. Earlier this month, reports emerged of Google soliciting Scots to record short audio samples, presumably to help its technology come to grips with the Scottish accent.…
USAA has upgraded its mobile app with another technologically innovative feature that should be an impactful aid to visually impaired customers. Called ‘voice-guided deposit’, the system offers verbal cues to help a user properly position a cheque for mobile capture and deposit—cues like “Move right,” or “Lift device.” Given USAA’s position as a credit union…
Indian authorities are trying to make it easy for citizens to manage their Aadhaar national ID cards. The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which oversees the ID card program and its associated biometric citizen registry, is quietly promoting its self-service online updating system. The self-service system lets citizens update information such as home address…
A team of students at the Birmingham City University is developing a smart cane that can help the blind to recognize friends and family on the street, the university has announced. Dubbed XploR, the smart cane is designed to use facial recognition technology to identify the faces of passersby and match them against images stored…
India’s federal government has declared that it is now necessary to have an Aadhaar card to apply for jobs through a government employment program, according to an article by Bagish Jha in The Times of India. Now, job-seekers who want to apply via the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) must have the…