AGE OF ACCESSIBILITY
Technology is opening doors for everyone, including those with disabilities.
AS DISRUPTIVE as technology can be, it also has a gentler side – it is helping those with disabilities lead better lives.
Dr Siti Salwa Salleh, a senior lecturer in Universiti Teknologi Mara’s Computer Science department, created an app to encourage her daughter who is deaf to communicate.
Her daughter, Amira Syuhada, had a difficult task ahead of her – to learn to speak vowels and consonants without hearing them.
“I discovered she was deaf when she was one year-old. She would open her mouth but no sound would come out. I decided to create a speech therapy app that would assess and grade her vowel and consonant sounds,” she says.
“We would connect a mic to a computer and she would speak into it. When the sound was wrong, the app would give her a low grade and vice versa.”
After three weeks of intensive daily eight-hour sessions, Amira could pronounce the consonants and vowels properly.
“When the pronunciation was wrong, I would help her by showing her the mouth movements,” says Siti.
Amira, now 16, can pronounce words but her mother is not done yet – she is considering working on the app further and to even open it up to a wider audience so others can benefit from it.
The phone gets smart
Telephone receptionist Mohd Akir Jaibin gets around by counting steps, using his cane to avoid obstacles and paying special attention to the sounds around him.
Like most other visually impaired people, Akir has to place food items in different spaces in the kitchen cabinet in order for him to identify them.
But the advent of the smartphone has changed things for Akir, 49.
“Before the smartphone, the feature phone was like a rock. I could only make and answer calls. Now it has made me so much more independent,” he says.
His Android phone’s TalkBack feature allows him to use apps without seeing them – the name of the apps are read out as he touches them so he knows which one to open.
Another app Akir uses is the free Tap Tap See for identifying household items. The app, launched in 2014, identifies objects snapped by the phone camera.
“Before the app, I would need help to do a simple thing like that,” he says.
Similarly, Nicole Pua, who has been visually-impaired from birth, says that technology has had a significant impact on her life.
“There’s no need for me to go the bank anymore. An open-source screen reader called NVDA (nonvisual desktop access) guides me through the bank’s website for me to do online transactions on my desktop,” she says.
NVDA was developed in 2006 by Queensland University of Technology graduate James Teh and partner Micheal Curran, who are both visually-impaired.
However, Pua doesn’t do mobile banking on her phone as it’s too complicated to deal with the touchscreen.
When Pua needs to withdraw money, she would rather head to the bank than use an ATM.
“It involves a lot of touchscreen interactions. The visually-impaired who do use ATMs have to memorise the positions of the keys,” she says.
Also, they run the risk of not knowing that the ATM has run out of cash or having their card confiscated should they make a mistake.
The solution already exists but has yet to reach here. Across the causeway, POSB Bank launched 86 Talking ATMs early this year. The ATMs, designed in partnership with the Singapore Association of the Visually Handicapped, come with Braille instructions and audio guidance.
Lend me your eyes
Pua uses the Be My Eyes app to identify the labels and expiration dates on canned food and the colour of clothes. The app works by initiating a live video session with a volunteer (it has over 400,000) who can be her eyes through the camera.
“I’ve been using it for the past two years. It’s very helpful when I have no sighted help around,” she says.
Pua, a University of Malaya linguistics graduate, finds that technology has also helped her make a living. She writes and edits company announcements, advertisements and newsletters with the use of NVDA.
“I had to pay RM4,000 for a screen reader (called Jaws) about a decade ago and about RM1,000 for updates every few years, which is a lot of money. So a few years ago, I was relieved to