Tech4ALL Digest, July 30

Our Progress

• We have concluded our Impact Technology Summer Fellowship project with the Public Interest Technology New England (PIT-NE) initiative. Three students – Dongim Lee (Olin College), Ishita Kakkar (UMass Amherst), Nikhila Peravali (UMass Amherst) – did a fantastic job benchmarking five ASR services (Whisper, Wav2Vec, Google Cloud, WeNet, Azure) using the stuttered speech dataset we collected with StammerTalk. Their benchmarking confirmed the performance disparity for stuttered speech. We will continue the second phase of this project with PIT-NE in the fall semester to produce a public dashboard for the benchmarking results.
• Rong Gong, our community partner from StammerTalk, will present our research on Mandarin stuttered speech dataset for fair ASR at this year’s InterSpeech conference on September 5th, 2024. We are willing to share the dataset for research and advancement in fair ASR, request access here.

One Story

“Erik Weihenmayer is the first blind rock climber to summit the tallest peak in every continent, Mount Everest included. At a young age, Weihenmayer was diagnosed with retinoschisis, a rare eye disease that left him sightless by age 13. But he didn’t let that hold him back from seeking out adventure, proving that what others may see as a hinderance can oftentimes be your greatest asset. Now, he’s using his incredible spirit to inspire others to live a life with no barriers.” Full Video: >> The Blind Mountaineer Who Conquered Everest

One Product

“By 2025—and for the first time in U.S. history—there will be more people over the age of 65 than people under the age of 13. That’s 75 million baby boomers existing in a market that is all but ready to support them.

Boom Home Medical is hoping to change that. The company, founded by Dr. Valerie Ulene and Byrdie Lifson Pompan, wants to reinvent the often intimidating, inconvenient, and unattractive home medical equipment industry—starting with a $39.95 bedside urinal that looks like an elegant vase.” Full article >> Home medical equipment is about to get a big design upgrade

One Tip

“Local governments are increasingly using technology such as kiosks, chatbots and online forms to streamline services, but are these tools accessible to everyone? Data reveals critical gaps that may have simple fixes.” Full article >> Accessibility Gaps in Gov Tech: Advice from a Blind Advocate

One Event

Date: 2024-08-01

“Virtual meetups on making WordPress websites accessible with live captions. This meetup has been officially approved for Continuing Accessibility Education Credits for maintaining Website Accessibility Specialist (WAS) and Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies (CPACC) certification through the International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP).” Full Info >>

Jobs

GiveDirectly is a nonprofit that lets donors like you send money directly to the world’s poorest households. In doing so, it aim to accelerate the end of extreme poverty globally.

GiveDirectly believes people living in poverty deserve the dignity to choose for themselves how best to improve their lives — cash enables that choice.

Since 2009, GiveDirectly has delivered $800M+ in cash directly into the hands of over 1.6 million people living in poverty. GiveDirectly currently has operations in Bangladesh, DRC, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, Morocco, Rwanda, Uganda, and the U.S. Now they have many positions opening from data engineers to program managers. Full Info >> GiveDirectly