New digital technologies in areas such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Mixed Reality (MR) are opening new opportunities for people with disabilities. The rapid pace of innovation in machine learning and new kinds of hardware has enabled the development of novel assistive technologies that can provide entirely new capabilities for people who are blind or have low vision, d/Deaf and hard of hearing, those with mobility impairments, and the neurodiverse. But the development of these technologies is marked by new challenges that may threaten the promise that they provide. Questions of ethics and inclusion are often afterthoughts (if they are addressed at all) in design and implementation that may lead to exclusion of potential users. Conversely, the fear of abuse of technologies (e.g., face recognition) may foreclose potentially transformative tools that can enable people with disabilities. Finally, powerful new AI techniques rely on huge amounts of data, but the resulting models reflect the underlying shape of that data. How do we ensure that this data includes the full range of people in the world, such that the models fully represent everyone? In this talk, I will describe some of the new opportunities and innovations in assistive technologies that we have been working on at Microsoft, as well as some of the ways that we are trying to drive research to create more inclusive technologies for all of us.
Ed Cutrell is a Sr. Principal Research Manager at Microsoft Research where he manages the MSR Ability group, exploring computing for disability, accessibility and inclusive design. He also holds an appointment as an Affiliate Professor in the Information School at the University of Washington. He received his BA in Psychology and Cognitive Science from Rice University in 1992 and went on to study Cognitive Neuropsychology at the University of Oregon where he received his PhD in 1999. He has been working in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) since 2000. Part of the Good Systems Speaker Series.