ATU632 – Intel Accessibility with Darryl Adams

Hi, I’m Darryl Adams, and I’m the Director of Accessibility at Intel, and this is your Assistive Technology Update.

Hello and welcome to your assistive technology update, a weekly dose of information that keeps you up to date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist individuals with disabilities and special needs. I’m your host, Josh Anderson with the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana. Welcome to episode 632 of Assistive Technology Update. It is scheduled to be released on July 7th, 2023. Today’s show, we are very excited to welcome back Darryl Adams, the Director of Accessibility for Intel. He’s here to tell us some of the amazing things that Intel is doing related to accessibility and hearing.

We are happy to welcome Amy Barry back from Bridging Apps, with an app worth mentioning. And as always, we’re very excited to have you listening. Don’t forget, if you are looking for a transcript of today’s show, you can go over to eastersealstech.com, find the show, and the whole transcript will be right there. Those transcripts are generously sponsored by Indiana Relay. You can find a lot of other great things over there at eastersealstech.com, including our other podcasts, AFAQ and Accessibility Minute, as well as blogs, tech tip videos, and everything you could ever want to know about INDATA but were always scared to ask. But without any further ado, let’s go ahead and get on with today’s show.

Listeners, I just wanted to let you know that we have our next INDATA full day training AT101, Tools and Apps for Everyday Living, coming up on Thursday, July 27th. We’ll put a link down in the show notes so that you can go over and register, but you can also just go to eastersealstech.com, find full day trainings, and register right there. We look forward to seeing you online for our next full day training on July 27th. Next up on the show, please join me in welcoming back Amy Barry from Bridging Apps with an app worth mentioning.

This is Amy Barry with Bridging Apps, and this is an app worth mentioning. This week’s featured app is called SoundPrint, find a quiet place. SoundPrint is a tool with a built-in noise meter that allows users to measure the loudness of a venue, and then submit that info into a shared database. Users can then search places like restaurants, bars, and coffee shops to visit or spend time, based on how loud or quiet it is. The app brings awareness to how loud sound levels can cause hearing loss. Use SoundPrint to avoid loud places and ask managers to find ways to bring the noise down, or submit a noise complaint. It calls itself, “Like Yelp, but for noise.”

The benefits of the app are huge for individuals or families who have extreme noise sensitivity and must choose restaurants based on whether they can sit outside. Using SoundPrint helps them to at least aim for finding options in the quiet to moderate range, so that outings can be tolerated. As the app becomes more widespread, and more users submit noise information, the crowdsourcing becomes more accurate and helpful. It is somewhat limited, but in using the app for about a year, our reviewer has seen a big jump in the number of offices, restaurants, coffee shops, grocery stores, and other venues. SoundPrint is currently available for iOS and Android devices, and it’s free to download. For more information on this app and others like it, visit bridgingapps.org.

Listeners, I think it was about last year that we had Darryl Adams from Intel on to talk about some of the great projects that they were working on to increase access to technology, and to the world as a whole, for individuals with disabilities. Well, today we’re really excited to welcome him back and talk about some of the new projects they’re working on related to hearing technology. Darryl, welcome back to the show.

Thank you Josh. Great to be here.

It is really great to have you back. For our new listeners or maybe folks who didn’t listen to the last one, before we get into talking about the great things that Intel’s doing, can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?

Sure. So in my role as the director of accessibility at Intel, we really focus on really three focus areas around accessibility. One being how Intel can be a great place to work for employees with disabilities, and how we make our physical and digital environments accessible. The second is around how we develop technology and products that are more accessible to more people. And that includes how we integrate inclusive research and inclusive design practices across the product cycle. And then thirdly, it’s around how Intel shows up in the industry. What is Intel’s role as a core technology, foundational building blocks supplier, and the need for the tech industry as a whole to come together to create solutions that are more accessible. It’s not just one company’s job. We have to all work together to make the actual experience with technology as accessible as possible.

That’s awesome. And I think I’ve said this before, but we are so glad that you do that. Because I know it helps out a ton of people, not just with the things we’re going to talk about here today, but just in the other things that you do. And as someone that works in employment for individuals with disabilities on the tech side, we love whenever a company keeps that front of mind, and actually makes it a goal that they keep on doing. But the reason we had you on today is that Intel’s doing some amazing things related to technology and hearing loss, and I want to try to make sure that we get to them all. So let’s start with increasing access to hearing aids. What is Intel doing to increase individuals’ access to hearing aid technology?

Yeah, I think one of the things that’s really important to consider here is that there’s hundreds of millions of people around the world that are experiencing disabling hearing loss. And so that’s a huge number, and therefore it’s really a huge opportunity still to really make a difference. And I think that one of the issues is that you can have a great technology solution, but if you’re not able to get it to the people that need it, either just logistically or affordability wise, it’s not helpful. And so one of the things that we’re really looking at is, how do we democratize hearing healthcare for populations that otherwise would not have access? And so over time, as most technology does, things get cheaper, things get better and more accessible, but that doesn’t happen magically. So we have to really push forward programs, processes, and technologies in general, to make sure that we’re providing access to everybody.

So in this case, what we’re doing, we’ve partnered with Accenture and a not-for-profit called 3DP For Me to work on a process that basically 3D prints hearing aid molds with the hopes of driving down the cost and the efficiency of creating hearing aids for people in places that would otherwise not have access to hearing healthcare. And so the idea being that somebody who has never before been able to see an audiologist can go through essentially a single day process and get a hearing exam, and from there, get a hearing or an ear scan remotely. Well, outside of a clinic environment. And that 3D ear scan is then uploaded to the cloud for post-processing, and then that creates a CAD file, which is then downloaded to a local 3D printer, which creates the mold on site. And then from there, you’re able to fill the mold, insert the electronics, and fit the participant.

So what we’ve done with our pilot is we identified 50 children in Jordan, all of whom have significant hearing loss, and we were able to run them through this process and technically, or traditionally, this process would take months of time and be fairly expensive to accomplish, but we were able to bring this down to a matter of days. And ideally what we want to do is get this all down to a point where this could be done onsite, single day, from hearing exam to fitted hearing aids. And then once we’ve accomplished that, scale that whole capability end to end wherever it’s needed. And that’s really the goal, is to think about how we can provide these low cost but effective hearing aids solutions to as many people as possible.

Oh, that’s really great. And I know you said the pilot was being done in Jordan, so that’s great that you’re, as you said, taking them to the folks that would have a real problem with access, of even being able to get those services. And I really like the way, too, that you’re bringing it to the people completely. Because I know transportation, especially in different parts of the world, can be a challenge in actually getting to the doctor. And having family members with hearing aids, yeah, just speeding up that process is a huge difference for folks.

Yeah. And I think the technology, one aspect is how can we bring this latest technology to try to solve this problem? But it’s also, we really got to think about the context, the greater context of hearing healthcare in general. It is a challenge to get the right level of expertise to the areas that needs it. And it’s not as simple as providing a hearing aid and solving a problem. Somebody who has not had proper hearing in their lifetime will need to have various speech therapies and assistance along the way. So it really is, there’s quite a journey involved here, but putting all these pieces together and putting all the different elements in place, so it’s really an end to end solution. And thinking about it holistically, from the human perspective, and ensuring that we’re actually solving the problem and not just throwing technology at a problem with hopes of solving it.

You made a perfect point there. And the next thing I was going to ask was follow up and those kind of things, because yeah, I know… And there’s been programs in the past, and I mean they’re still helpful, where it’s donated hearing aids, so it’s not always accustomed to the individual, and maybe it helps, maybe it doesn’t, but there never really was that follow up. So I like that you’re doing the… Looking at it to do the wraparound, and be able to adjust it to the person’s needs. And as you said, if you’ve had hearing loss your whole life, then speech could be affected, as well as just being able to get used to all those sounds in the environment maybe that you didn’t have before.

And that’s going to take some definite adjustment for the individual as well as for the technology. So I like it, especially even as a technology company, that you’re thinking about the individual and actually solving the problem. As opposed to, as you put it, and as we’ve probably all seen, just throwing the technology at it and hoping that it works. So that is awesome. So another thing that you’re doing is you’re working to improve connectivity and compatibility with computers and hearing aids. Can you tell us a little bit about that program?

Yes. This is a long time coming, I think. So really the headline here is the introduction of Bluetooth low energy audio, or LE audio for short. So this is a standard that’s been years in the making and has officially come out this year just recently. And now Microsoft has launched it in Windows 11 as well. So this is the very beginning, but what we’re going to see here over the couple of years to come is the proliferation of hearing aid manufacturers, as well as earbud manufacturers and headphone manufacturers, all supporting this new LE audio format and codec. And what it really brings to the table is much higher quality audio. It brings better controls in the audio channels, or control channels and audio channels to bring just better control in general. Really importantly, for hearing aids, it is all about really low power.

And so being able to optimize the hearing experience while improving battery life is this age-old challenge that we have with hearing aids. And as a hearing aid user myself, I find that this is one of my favorite things, and things I’m looking forward to most about the upcoming years, is just having a far more improved audio quality experience while not having to replace batteries every day. One of the other things that’s really interesting here is that hearing aids have historically been really difficult to connect to a PC. And in fact, even until fairly recently, it was quite challenging to do so with a mobile phone as well. But things are slowly improving, and it’s becoming more seamless to connect a hearing device to a phone, for example. But we really want to make sure that that same experience can be had with a PC.

And so it should be that if you are a hearing aid user and you use a PC, and for example, maybe you spend your days on Zoom calls or Teams links and things like this, and so you’re constantly connected to your computer, and hearing and audio experiences are a key part of this. So we want to make sure that people don’t have to spend a lot of time, and a lot of frustration, frankly, connecting their device to their PC. So that’s what we’re working on now, is to ensure that we’ve got seamless compatibility between the major hearing aid manufacturers and PCs, and that way someone can basically plug and play fairly simply between their computer experience and their phone experience, and all the while maintaining a high quality audio signal to their hearing aids.

Well, that’s great. I like the way that you said seamless, and to make it easy, because I know for a lot of folks that I work with sometimes, that yes, maybe I can connect this to this device or this device, but it’s always so different, so cumbersome, it can be really hard, which as you brought up earlier, makes it inaccessible. Because if I’ve got to jump through a bunch of hoops and things, and that you’re going to disconnect all the time, or it’s really challenging, then I’m probably not going to use it. So I like that you guys are thinking to put that in there, and actually make it usable for individuals who can benefit from it.

Yes, and we’ve been very fortunate also to have a cohort of Intel employees who are hearing aid users be able to test these compatibility parameters in real time as this is being developed, so it’s been really… And over the months to come, we’ll continue to engage with that group and make sure that we’re taking their feedback, and incorporating it into the process, to make that connectivity even more seamless.

Excellent. Excellent. Well, to go a little further, you also have the All Ears Project. Can you tell us about that?

Yeah, so this is actually one piece, I think, of a longer term vision around optimizing the audio experience on the PC. And so when I think about optimizing it’s really also about understanding the user. So the system fundamentally understanding the preferences and the needs of each user. And so in the context of hearing, we’re talking about, if somebody has a hearing deficit, whether it’s resolved or improved with a hearing aid or not, the system should be able to understand what frequencies or what gaps somebody might have in their hearing, and present that person with suitable audio that they can hear. So that’s my ultimate vision here, would be to ensure that for every individual interacting with a computer, their audio experience is optimized for them.

And so I think we’re a little ways from that vision, but that’s the push, is down that path. In addition to having high quality, low latency captioning to support that full vision for understanding, and just basically improving that experience, so folks with who are hard of hearing have the best possible experience when they’re using audio on their computer. So for All Ears, it’s one component where if you have this scenario where you’re focused on your work, and maybe you’re in a meeting, and there are ambient sounds that might be important to you. And so this is the…

So at one case, you can think about having noise cancellation to drown out the ambient sounds to focus, but in the cases where it’s important to hear certain ambient sounds, so maybe there’s a doorbell, or there’s a siren, or there’s somebody specifically that you need to be aware of, a coworker or a family member when they speak, All Ears is listening to the ambient sounds for you, and it will provide a visual communication to the screen to let you know that something is happening that’s relevant that you need to be paying attention to. So it’s just a way to be able to ultimately have a focused session on your computer, but be interrupted when there’s something important that you need to be aware of audibly.

Nice. And yeah, I can definitely see where that’s beneficial, because sometimes you do need to know those sounds and have them, but you need to drown out the rest, which can be a huge challenge and probably cause anxiety for some folks as well. Just not knowing what’s going on in the world around them, for lack of better terms, but still need that focus, and need to drown out some of those noises, but still be able to get the information. So that’s really great, and I love to hear that that’s just part of a much larger project to personalize that audio experience for each individual. And really thinking about just how different every hearing need is, and then trying to just make the systems where they work for everyone. Because that’s, well, kind of what, I guess, we all hope everything eventually does in every kind of way, but I’m glad you guys are working on that for the audio part.

Yeah, it is. The way I think about this also is that this takes, as I noted at the beginning, this takes an industry, it’s not a single company solution, where when we think about the role that Intel plays as we create microprocessors, but we also really create computer architecture. And that architecture is what informs hardware design, which is really the constraints around all the software that gets written. And so if we’re not thinking about these ideas, these concepts, at an architectural level, we’ll be less likely to produce hardware that supports the needs that future software will require to make all these things happen. So it’s really, even though it’s layers beneath what a typical user will experience, it’s all critical. All these components need to be in place in order to support that future, really that fully accessible future of technology.

Well, and like you said, it’s building that architecture, and then that helps put it at least front of mind for the folks down the line in the hardware, the software, that once it can do this and can support that, then it gives them the freedom to create it, as far as from the software side and everything else. So I think it’s important, because if you don’t, like you said, if you don’t have that accessibility and those features built in at that very first level, it’s very hard to build it on, on the next level.

Absolutely. And it’s also where all the standards play a critical role here too, where we need to ensure that the standards that are created are encompassing these concepts. And so that way as each computer manufacturer, or each device manufacturer is bringing new products to market, they’re all utilizing and conforming to the same set of standards. So the experience should also be consistent across the different products that will be available.

Most definitely, most definitely. Now, Darryl, you’ve got a couple of different projects going on here. Are you able to tell me a story about maybe some of the feedback, or a personal experience related to one of the projects?

Yeah, this is really why I do what I do. My personal story is that I’m legally blind, and with retinitis pigmentosa, so I’m losing my eyesight from the outside in, and I’m deaf in my right ear, so I’ve got the single sided deafness. And so as I’m highly motivated by understanding how technology can really improve my own life, and the lives of folks with disabilities across the board. And so that’s what really gets me up in the morning. And just being able to be able to recognize and to be able to drive projects that do have the ability to fundamentally make a difference for people.

And not only make a difference in terms of introducing a prototype that can demonstrate how something might be useful, but having the line of sight and the ability to scale that to potentially millions of people, to truly make that difference, get a product to the market that solves the problem, that’s the motivation. And so when we think about things like the collaboration with Accenture and 3DP, for me, this is… We’re really just focusing on establishing the proof of concept that says that you can make hearing healthcare affordable, attainable, to everyone. And it’s a great idea, but then to be able to see the line of sight, to say that this is not only a great idea, but this is a reality. We can make this happen, and it can be reproducible and scalable.

And then to see the results of that pilot, and see the children who have had hearing loss for their entire lives, and for the first time be listening to a hearing test, and hearing somebody speak, and the smile on their face is just incredible. And just to think that this is one of potentially millions of people that can experience this, and then actually go forward and have a life where they’re going to be much more able to participate in education, and get employment, and just have so much, a fulfilling life of contribution, rather than a life of difficulty in communication and difficulty in participating. So all of this just is really reinforcing that the opportunity here is just massive, and it’s really exciting to be a part of it.

And we are always very, very excited to learn about it. Darryl, if our listeners want to find out more about these projects, or the other things that Intel’s doing around accessibility, what’s the best way for them to do that?

We do have an accessibility website, so I think probably the quickest way is just to Google Intel and accessibility, and you should see that that page should come up pretty quickly there, or near the top at least. And that gives an overview of our focus areas, and what we’re working on, and it stays pretty up to date in terms of the types of projects that we’re working on as well.

Awesome. We’ll put that down into the show notes. Well, Darryl, thank you so much for coming back on today, and we always love to talk about you and just hear, well, your passion and your motivation for the things that you guys do there at Intel. But really just also hear the forward thinking ideas that you all have, but then also just the way that you do implement them, and try to make sure that they’re going to be repeatable, and can help folks all across the globe with some of these needs. So thank you again so much for coming back on the show today.

Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.

Do you have a question about assistive technology? Do you have a suggestion for someone we should interview on Assistive Technology Update? If so, call our listener line at (317) 721-7124. Send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org, or shoot us a note on Twitter, @INDATAProject. Our captions and transcripts for the show are sponsored by the Indiana Telephone Relay Access Corporation, or InTRAC. You can find out more about InTRAC at relayindiana.com. A special thanks to Nicole Prieto for scheduling our amazing guests and making a mess of my schedule. Today’s show was produced, edited, hosted, and fraught over by yours truly. The opinions expressed by our guests are their own and may or may not reflect those of the INDATA Project, Easterseals Crossroads, our supporting partners, or this host. This was your Assistive Technology Update, and I’m Josh Anderson with the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana. Looking forward to seeing you next time. Bye-bye.