San Francisco, 17 October 2023 – In a significant move towards fostering inclusivity in technology, Be My Eyes, a company renowned for its service connecting individuals who are blind or have low vision with sighted volunteers through live video and AI, has announced an innovative collaboration with Microsoft. The partnership aims to enhance AI models to better address the needs of over 340 million people globally who are blind or have low vision.
The initiative focuses on incorporating accessibility data into AI models, a step often neglected in publicly accessible datasets. This oversight results in a 'disability data desert', where the experiences and requirements of the blind and low-vision community are inadequately represented. Be My Eyes has raised concerns that without rectifying this gap, the evolution of AI may amplify bias and inaccessibility, echoing past mistakes from the rise of the internet but with potentially wider ramifications.
Earlier this year, Be My Eyes expressed concerns about the exclusion of the blind and low-vision community from AI development. The company noted that disability is frequently underrepresented or misclassified in AI training datasets. To combat this, Be My Eyes announced in July its plan to supply video data to help organisations train AI in an inclusive manner.
As part of the new collaboration, Be My Eyes will provide Microsoft with video data from its platform to support AI model training. Importantly, no additional data such as images or textual responses is being shared. This video data will aid in refining scene understanding and description, intended to enhance AI's functionality for the blind and low-vision community. The company emphasised that all personal and account information would be removed from the video metadata and that strict guidelines prevent the use of this data for marketing or other purposes outside of model training.
Mike Buckley, CEO of Be My Eyes, expressed enthusiasm for the collaboration, stating, "We’re excited to work with Microsoft to make AI models more inclusive." Highlighting the rapid development of AI models consuming vast datasets, Buckley pointed out the potential for these datasets to perpetuate bias, ableism, and exclusion unless inclusivity is actively pursued.
Reflecting on this mission, Jenny Lay-Flurrie, Microsoft's chief accessibility officer, added, "We live in a world that isn’t designed for disabled people, and this is reflected in the datasets used to train AI systems. Our collaboration with Be My Eyes helps us close the data gap and make AI more inclusive." She emphasised the importance of accessibility as part of Microsoft’s core culture, commitment, and practice, from innovation to hiring and policy advocacy.
This partnership forms part of Microsoft's broader initiative to construct AI models that inherently consider accessibility, having worked for several years to address the gap in disability data. Through a global network involving people with disabilities, partners, and customers, Microsoft strives to boost awareness, employment opportunities, and policies that advance technology accessibility. They see disability-centric data as integral to making technology work better for over 1 billion people worldwide facing disabilities.
The announcement from Be My Eyes and Microsoft underscores a pivotal collaboration aimed at transforming AI into a more inclusive tool, setting a benchmark for how technology can and should evolve to be accessible to all.
Source: Noah Wire Services