as you show social unit expand it
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Explanation:
Empowerment through technology
At the unit’s launch event at Plexal’s base in what was once the TV broadcast centre for the 2012 London Olympics, Rezene Woldeyesus, co-director of sign language company Love Language, revealed that there are only 980 qualified sign language interpreters in the UK serving a deaf population of more than 180,000.
Woldeyesus, who first came to the UK as a refugee from the war between Ethiopia and Eritrea and is himself deaf, said: “The disparity between those figures is huge, so technology is essential in order for us to be able to really integrate into society, and looking towards how that experience of accessibility can be done well and designed well through education, right through employment and to services, that is our task together.”
Microsoft government affairs manager Tom Morrison-Bell said Microsoft saw disability as a “lens to innovation” and that the firm now looks to the strengths that disabled people can bring to it throughout the hiring process, particularly in development.
He pointed to several examples of how Microsoft is building features into its technology that were developed by and for disabled people, such as artificial intelligence (AI)-powered closed captions – coming soon to Skype video calls – or facial recognition for blind people. Such features could benefit everyone, he said.
“Many of those technologies that we take for granted today – the fact that you can talk to your phone, the fact that it talks back to you, the fact that it’s got a touchscreen – those are all technologies where people with disabilities were the first power users,” said Morrison-Bell. “The absolute need started there and then everybody else gets to use them.
“That is something that is always forgotten about. Innovation is driven by constraints that many of us are lucky enough not to have to face.”