January 1, 2024
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 2022, 1 in 6, or approximately 4.4 million Australian’s are classified as having a disability. Within that population, over a quarter are estimated to have some level of communication difficulty.
Current advances in technology, particularly in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) sector, are revolutionising the way typical communicators interact, rapidly increasing efficiency and the rate at which ideas are realised.
However, with these advances the disability community are often left behind, due to barriers in communication and lack access to information.
In communication breakdowns, we employ a range of alternative communication methods other than speech to repair the conveyance of meaning in interactions. For people with disabilities who can’t speak verbally, this principle is applied in conjunction with technology to provide a new means of communication.
AAC (Alternative and Augmentative Communication) refers to a variety of different methods of communicating other than verbal speech. High-tech AAC devices can assist people with communication difficulties to express intended meaning through a piece of technology generating speech for them through touch-input (i.e. typing or selecting symbols on a screen) to sophisticated eye-gaze technologies.
While AAC presents valuable opportunities for populations such as those with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Intellectual Disability to convey meaning in a way typical language users can understand, its usage is often slow and laborious, incurring much longer pauses between communication turns than is comfortable for the average untrained communication partner. This further contributes to people with disabilities from being left out in social participation.
AI has the opportunity to enable people who use high-tech AAC devices to communicate to be able to participate more in naturalistic conversation, increasing the rate of communication output, and allowing involvement in more opportunities across family, community, and societal spheres, as well as in accessing innovative communication tool technologies.
A recent research project presented at the International Conference of Computer-Human interaction (CHI 2022) by a Google research team investigated how AI language models can either enhance or impact communication in AAC users experiences. Risks were discussed regarding censorship and bias from the AI tool, inserting the wrong tone or style that the communicator intends, and providing inaccurate suggestions of language around disability and health.
Typical verbal communicators who have used AI still face the challenges of technologies overriding authentic communication, and there is much danger in predictive AI which may obscure or override what a person with disability may be truly trying to communicate.
However, AI technologies show some early ability to budget for this with their capacity to “learn” from users and tailor suggestions according to previous input, however, more research is needed to shape the parameters around how to best supplement communication for people with disabilities.
Technology will have challenges in democratisation of free and conventional communication for people with disabilities and communication impairments, but continued improvements and innovations will certainly aid their involvement in and contribution to society through building more efficient and naturalistic means of communication.
Providing registered NDIS disability services and building communities throughout Brisbane.
