AI for Accessibility Hackathon 2019
Together, let’s harness the power of AI to amplify human capability, with and for the more than one billion people around the world with a disability!
On Friday, October 11, 2019, Microsoft APAC will host its first AI for Accessibility hackathon business partners, start-ups, developers and universities in seven countries (Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam). The goal is to develop prototypes of AI solutions that can transform the daily life, employability and communication for people with disabilities.
Each team can include up to five members. Every team member is invited to register using this link. Registration will be closed on October 6 midnight.
You will ideate and hack on real-life problem statements listed below. Alternatively, you may address an accessibility challenge of your own.
The teams developing the best prototypes will get a chance to get guidance from Microsoft to apply for an AI for Accessibility grant to bring their solution to market.
All IP including background and foreground is solely owned by the hackathon participants. However, we do encourage participants to contribute to and collaborate on open datasets related to their solution.
Problem statements
For each country, problem statements have been identified by local partners serving people with disabilities. Those partners will participate in the hackathon day so you can ask questions and get their input as you ideate and hack on one of those challenges!
|
# |
Country |
Category |
Problem statements: opportunities to use AI on accessibility |
|
1 |
Indonesia |
Daily life |
How to make public voice announcements accessible for people who are deaf or hard of hearing, in public transportation (e.g. bus, train station, airport), at the hospital or at the bank, where notifications (e.g. change of gate, new bus route, queue number) are often done through voice without any visual information. |
|
2 |
Indonesia |
Communication |
How to enable an effective two-way communication between people who are deaf and others, through a solution that is not only ‘speech-to-text”, but also ‘sign language’ to ‘voice’ or ‘text’. |
|
3 |
Indonesia |
Communication |
How to empower people with down syndrome to better understand abstract concepts (including complex or long sentences) by translating information received into visuals such as symbols, muted videos or pictures. |
|
4 |
Korea |
Communication |
How to support the learning experience for students from multicultural families (more than 2 million couples in Korea) in the classroom. |
|
5 |
Korea |
Communication |
How to empower people who are deaf or hard of hearing in group conversations such as conferences or roundtables. |
|
6 |
Korea |
Daily life |
How to efficiently collect and provide data on mobility and accessible places for people with disabilities in cities. |
|
7 |
Malaysia |
Communication |
How to improve communication between professionals and people who are deaf or hard of hearing, leading to improved clinic management, rehabilitation of patients and quality of life. |
|
8 |
Malaysia |
Employment |
How to increase job placement opportunities and reduce occupational hazards for people who are deaf or hard of hearing in Malaysia. |
|
9 |
Malaysia |
Employment |
How to investigate, understand, and improve employers’ perspectives in employing people who are deaf or hard of hearing in Malaysia. |
|
10 |
Philippines |
Daily Life |
How to enable a secure online and offline payment experience through AI for people with visual impairment (e.g. training Seeing AI to detect Philippines currency, improving the digital banking experience). |
|
11 |
Philippines |
Daily life |
How can AI enhance wearable technology to help people with visual impairment in their daily life (e.g., while taking public transportation, navigating the city, doing the grocery, keeping fit and healthy, etc.) |
|
12 |
Philippines |
Employment |
How to help people with visual impairment improve their storytelling and public speaking skills through AI |
|
13 |
Philippines |
Communication |
How to increase the accessibility of websites through AI (e.g. automatically applying accessibility standards to websites; scanning new and revised content for accessibility issues daily; offering corrections to improve accessibility) |
|
14 |
Singapore |
Daily life |
How to build smart wheelchairs that enable users to confidently navigate in the city, for instance by leveraging crowd-sourced data. |
|
15 |
Singapore |
Daily life |
How to empower caregivers to monitor the condition of an elderly and predict/prevent that a fall may happen based on a few criteria such as medical conditions, balance and walking gait. |
|
16 |
Singapore |
Employment |
How to increase the productivity of people with cerebral palsy (as well as patients diagnosed with stroke or Parkinson) who have difficulty speaking and typing due to motor coordination problems, using better speech-to-speech translation capabilities or predictive speech devices, for common languages used in Singapore such as local dialect and Singlish. The solution should be built not only as a communication tool but also to increase users’ confidence through a positive experience. Note: this could be designed as a localized version of Vioceitt |
|
17 |
Singapore |
Daily life |
How to alleviate the pain and discomfort of people with severe disability (e.g. spinal muscular dystrophy, stroke, sport athletes, elderly) who sit the whole day and need to shift at night, through an AI-powered bed that could distribute the pressure and adjust the position of the bed. |
|
18 |
Singapore |
Employment |
How can we make use of AI to build confidence and social skills of job seekers who cite lack of networking skills and confidence as challenges to job hunting? At the same time, how can AI encourage/facilitate social interaction with the community? |
|
19 |
Thailand |
Communication and Connection |
How to help people who are deaf or hard of hearing to better communicate and connect with others. |
|
20 |
Thailand |
Daily life |
How to empower people with mobility and physical disabilities to do daily activities more independently, without the support of caregivers. |
|
21 |
Thailand |
Employment |
How to help people with autism to fulfill their professional goals and improve their productivity. |
|
22 |
Vietnam |
Daily life |
How to recommend optimized routes customized by disability type, by integrating AIinto Dmap. |
|
23 |
Vietnam |
Daily life |
How to issue recommendations on accessible cities for the government based on data(e.g. number of inaccessible public places, number of people with disabilities). |
How to prepare
- Bring in your laptop as well as earphones to watch short training videos during the hack!
- Explore the problem statements listed above; you will be asked to pick one at the start of the day (note: you may also choose to work on a different problem statement of your choice).
- Join a live preparatory call on October 8, Tuesday, at 16:30 Singapore time: join via this link.
- Get familiar with the Power Apps platform, which will help you create rapid and low-code app prototypes:
Create a canvas app in Power Apps
Formula reference for Power Apps
Learn how to use and customize pre-built AI models - Get familiar with Azure cognitive services:
Create intelligent bots
Process and classify images
Evaluate text
Process and translate speech
Program
| Breakfast & networking |
| Opening speech by Microsoft |
| Sharing by nonprofits and government representatives about accessibility challenges in their market |
| Ideation and hacking in teams, with optional break-out sessions running in parallel |
| Pitch round by each team |
| Jury deliberation |
| Announcement of best teams & closing speech |
Venue
Visit your local partner hub now:
Singapore Partner Hub | Philippines Partner Hub | Malaysia Partner Hub | Korea Partner Hub
