Global Mobile Awards: Microsoft's Seeing AI app for blind people wins accessibility and inclusion prize
Robin Christopherson | 27 Feb 2018Microsoft's excellent iOS app for blind people and those with sight loss Seeing AI picked up the Accessibility and Inclusion prize at the Mobile World Congress 2018 Global Mobile Awards in Barcelona today.
For the last three I've years been a judge in the Best Use of Mobile for Accessibility & Inclusion category. It’s a very prestigious honour to win a GLOMO at the Mobile World Congress and Seeing AI is a worthy winner. Take a look at previous excellent winners, here.
Seeing AI uses the smartphone camera to recognise and narrate the world to people with little or no vision. Functions include the ability to describe scenes (mentioning what furniture and other objects are around you), people (estimations of their age, gender, emotions and clothing etc) and text recognition (to take a letter or magazine and read out the text). These features represent enormous opportunities for blind people to get more information and support in their work or daily lives.
With a recent update to the app – bringing several new functions including light detection, colour and handwriting recognition - we recently put our appreciation for this excellent app on the table with an article: Microsoft Seeing AI - the best ever app for blind people just got even better.
Hector Minto (pictured), Microsoft's senior technology evangelist (accessibility and assistive tech), told AbilityNet: “It’s fabulous for the Seeing AI app and its team to be recognised by the GLOMO Awards judging panel. Artificial Intelligence can and will be grabbed by the disability and accessibility world to design a whole new set of tools to level the playing field. I think Seeing AI will be the first of many apps to recognise the opportunity here. “
Useful links
- Seeing AI is available for free only on iOS
- Keep an eye on the Mobile Daily Preview as an excellent way of getting an up-to-the-minute overview of the main themes coming out of MWC
- Robin Christopherson is head of digital inclusion at AbilityNet. He explores the world of accessibility in his blog series
- See the full list of winners for the 2018 Global Mobile Awards