Girls and Women with Disabilities in Tech

Girls and women with disabilities face discrimination more than their male peers due to gender-based barriers, affecting their access to education, healthcare, employment and social inclusion.

AI offers transformative support, where AI tools for disabilities enhance independence by converting text/speech, assisting with navigation, automating smart homes, and providing personalized learning, breaking down barriers for users with visual, hearing, speech, cognitive, and mobility challenges. (1)

While girls and women with disabilities can own a smartphone, but they may not know the AI-powered mobile apps designed to help them:

For Vision Impairments

• Seeing AI: Uses phone camera to narrate text, identify people/objects, read currency, and describe surroundings. It narrates the world around you. Designed with and for the blind and low vision community, this ongoing research project harnesses the power of AI to open up the visual world. 

• Be My Eyes: Connects blind with AI to get instant descriptions and help with visual tasks. Powered by OpenAI’s new GPT-4 language model, which contains a dynamic new image-to-text generator. Users can send images via the app to an AI-powered Virtual Volunteer, which will answer any question about that image and provide instantaneous visual assistance for a wide variety of tasks.

• Envision: It empowers girls who are blind or have low vision to access everyday visual information for themselves by detecting objects and scenes in their surroundings as well as print.

• Google Audio Overview: Provides searchers with an audio overview of their search results, and the ability to then click through to learn more.

For Hearing Impairments

• Live Transcribe & Notification: Provides real-time Transcriptions of your conversations and sound event notifications for over 80 languages. It makes everyday conversations and surrounding sounds more accessible among people who are deaf and hard of hearing.

• Live Caption & Translation: live captions any app with translation. Instant screen captions and subtitles.

• Flash Alert & Led Flashlight: Uses visual cues (flashing light) for calls or messages. 

• Rogervoice: It is the call caption solution for your mobile. The app transcribes your calls so you can read your conversations in real time, directly on your mobile phone.

For Speech & Communication

• Speechify – Voice AI Assistant: Converts written text to natural-sounding speech, read aloud docs, books, PDFs, Voice AI Assistant, and AI Podcasts. This text to voice generator allows users with visual impairment or dyslexia to have text read to them.

• Speech Assistant AAC: A Text to speech AAC App for girls who are speech impaired.

For Cognitive & Learning Disabilities (ADHD, Autism, etc.) 

• ChatGPT: Answers any question, offers writing support, summarizes information, and helps with clarity.

• Siri / Google Assistant: Manages schedules, reminders, and answers questions. 

• Gork – Smarter AI Advisor: Answers any question and generate striking images with AI.

• Autimo: A thoughtfully designed app aimed at assisting children with autism in recognizing emotions and facial expressions. It achieves this through engaging identification games, including pairing, intruder, and guessing games, complemented by visual support.

• Otsimo – Special Education: Offers certified educational games for learning disabilities, autism and down syndrome.

For Mobility & Physical Disabilities

• Wheelmap: It is a map for finding wheelchair accessible places. The map works similar to Wikipedia: Anyone can contribute and mark public places around the world according to their wheelchair accessibility.

• Waymap: It is a navigation app that uses smartphone sensors and user steps for accurate navigation by providing audio directions and dynamic route adjustments in real time.

• Evelity: Provides better orientation and navigation for people with disabilities, or in disabling situations, in complex places of everyday life, using a mobility assistance app.

For Healthcare

• Flo Period & Pregnancy Tracker: It helps to track ovulation, period and pregnancy. Remainder you with birth control pills and menstrual.

For Risks and Violence Prevention

• Emergency Button: Send an emergency message in one click. You can add some contact numbers for help in one click.

• SOS Alert: Feel safe with the SOS Alert app that contacts security. There are many apps via the store; find your country's app.

In conclusion, girls are typically "disabled" by attitudes and behaviors as well as design that ignores the diversity of human experience, even if limitations are frequently linked to impairments. Additionally, they are less likely to comprehend mobile devices, their advantages, and how to use phone accessibility features, and they typically have fewer opportunities to acquire digital knowledge and skills. (2)

References:

1. https://www.imacliche.com/inclusive-harmonies-empowering-users-with-visual-and-hearing-impairments-to-experience-music-in-microsoft-office-2021

2. https://accessabilitiesexpo.com/how-to-improve-digital-inclusion-and-accessibility-for-girls-with-disabilities/ 

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                                 The Writer's Profile

Adnan Mamoun Kaderi

Damascus, Syria