Sheri Albers uses a mobile app to scan a flyer. Credit: Nicole Aponte

Artificial intelligence, or AI, has increasingly become a part of everyday life, from being a customer service tool, to one of the newest developments in AI, ChatGPT, a chatbot that uses a deep learning model. Like other types of technology, blind people are interested in how AI can increase accessibility and independence. One way to help get more AI developed, that blind people can use, is to get the news out there that blind people are using it and interested in more.
 
So, when Nicole Aponte, a Syracuse University journalism student, reached out to our Community Outreach Specialist, Sheri Albers, about doing a story on how blind people use AI, Sheri was happy to talk to her.
 
Nicole had reached the final stage for the Hearst Foundation’s Journalism Awards Program. She and other college journalism students were given the topic of AI to create a news story on. After researching AI online, Nicole came across a video Sheri appeared in, about an autonomous vehicle, which uses AI, being developed by Waymo. Nicole decided to make her focus on how AI was beneficial to blind people.
 
 “Nicole watched the video and told me she was very excited by my enthusiasm for a self-driving car and what it would mean for a blind person to have that available to them. She told me she was coming to San Francisco and wanted to interview me,” Sheri said. 
 
Sheri thought it would also be good for Nicole to talk to another blind person who could discuss AI from a more technological perspective, so she asked Access Technology Specialist, Fernando Macias, to join her in talking to Nicole. Fernando gave us his take on AI.

Fernando Macias uses a mobile app to help him cross the street Credit: Nicole Aponte

“I think AI is going to be the technology that defines the 2020s. We had the smartphone defining the 2010s and now we have AI popping up more into our everyday lives. As the AI technology matures, it’ll be even better suited to help people who are blind or have low vision.
 
“Mainstream companies like OpenAI are partnering with companies like Be My Eyes to put mainstream technology in specialized apps [for the blind]. It’s making mainstream the idea that blind people can partake in everyday things like reading a menu at a restaurant or looking at labels at a store. I think it’s wonderful. And I think this is headed in a very good direction.”
 
Nicole created a segment highlighting how Sheri and Fernando use AI which you can watch on YouTube. For her work, she won second place in the Hearst Journalism Awards category of National Television Championship.

Sheri’s excitement about AI in the video was evident. “I just know it’s going to be a game-changer for the blindness community,” she beamed.