Tamar Shapira: Developing Tools to Increase Accessibility in Digital Products

Feb 02, 2024 Posted by: Daniela Vega Israel,  SDG 10,  SDG 9,  Tamar Schapira

Tamar: Thanks for having me, Spiffy! At SenseIT, our mission is developing tools that enable development teams to release accessible digital products for people with disabilities. This means, we develop tools that can be used while developing a web app that can test and help to fix issues that are found in the product associated with accessibility (for example, your favorite social media app can’t be accessed by my friend who is paralyzed in both arms). We focused our effort on finding issues that are related to how people with disabilities could or could not use the product being developed (for example, my paralyzed friend must use apps that are compatible with his technological devices that enable him to browse).

Sara A Smolley: Making Voice Tech Accessible To Those Who Need It Most

Nov 03, 2021 Posted by: Anushree Nande Israel,  Sara Smolley,  SDG10,  SDG3,  USA

Sara: Voice-driven technologies are increasingly mainstream. For most of us, voice-activation can be convenient and fun. But for millions of people with motor-control challenges and speech disabilities due to developmental disorders, degenerative disease, stroke, and brain injury, the ability to communicate and be understood, to navigate the environment and control devices by voice can be life changing. Many who can potentially benefit from a “voice first” world cannot access these technologies because along with motor control challenges, they do not have standard speech patterns. Standard speech recognition isn’t designed to work for impaired speech (“dysarthria”). Voiceitt’s mission and vision is to make voice technology accessible to everyone.