Crowdsourcing Ability

As smart mobile devices become ubiquitous, we are beginning to see crowdsourcing as a way to help people with disabilities. Crowdsourcing is calling upon people online for information, services, and capital rather than using traditional or institutional sources. Below are three examples of platforms designed to build online communities of service for people with disabilities.

Launched on January 15th, 2015, Be My Eyes (BME) is an app which allows people with visual impairments to summon sight in real time from a network of volunteers. Any time they need help, a user with visual impairment simply hits a button on their BME app (they are able to navigate the screen using other apps like VoiceOver, which translate screen content to synthetic speech). BME then sends a message to a randomly selected volunteer in the network asking if they’re available to help. If they accept the request, the two are connected via their phones and the volunteer can see through the help requester’s camera. If, for example, the person who is visually impaired needs help reading a label, they would simply hold the camera up to the label, allowing the volunteer to read it out loud.

VocaliD is another app which “crowdsources ability,” only for speech rather than sight. We’ve all heard Stephen Hawking’s robot-sounding computerized voice system. Although he seems to have embraced it (after many years), others who use such speech-generating devices feel estranged from their own voices. “We wouldn’t dream of fitting a little girl with the prosthetic limb of a grown man,” said VocaliD’s founder Rupal Patel, “so, why then the same prosthetic voice?” Patel’s solution: crowdsource a vast library of voices which can then be blended together using cutting-edge technology to create “custom vocal personas.” “Voice donors” simply download the app and record a series of words using their smart phones.

Finally, in 2013, National Public Radio (NPR) created an online map for accessible playgrounds called Playgrounds for Everyone. Anyone with internet access can see and contribute to the map. Its purpose is to provide an up-to-date database for parents of children with disabilities and to expose underserved neighborhoods to governments.

These examples are only the first glimmers of what will become an expansive constellation of crowdsourcing platforms for people with disabilities. Especially as augmented reality, 3D printing, and the “internet of things” become more widespread, the possibilities for crowdsourcing are going to explode. We as OT practitioners are positioned to be at the center of entrepreneurial ventures parlaying these capacities to the benefit of our client populations. At the very least, we should keep our “clinical tool boxes” current with the latest applications.

The “ultimate empathy machine”

Chris Milk is a media artist who has made envelope-pushing music videos for musicians including Kanye West, U2, and Arcade Fire. One of his most recent projects, though, is a short film using Oculus Rift virtual reality (VR) to document the daily life of a 12-year-old girl in a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan. The film was recorded using 360 degree camera technology, so that when one puts on the VR headset she can look up, down, and around as if she were actually there. The experience is immersive; even the sound changes according to which direction the user is looking.

Milk says this technology has the power to become the “ultimate empathy machine.” With that in mind, he took his film to the United Nations and showed it to key figures who could and would decide the fate of refugees in Jordan.

Occupational therapists work on a daily basis with some of the most vulnerable and marginalized people in the world. They are all but invisible to policy makers and ultimately ignored when the big decisions are made. How many people with disabilities live in poverty because of this? How many older adults can’t get the care they need because of this? How many people with mental illness are discriminated against because of this?

Until now our “empathy machines” have been two dimensional: photographs, screens, and the printed word. What effect will a third dimension have? Imagine going to the capitol, putting Oculus Rift over your congressman’s eyes, and sitting patiently while she turns her head from side to side, seeing the world from your client’s perspective.

Only time will tell how successful this technology proves as a tool for advocacy, but I hope therapists and other healthcare professionals are among the frontrunners in testing it.