Zhi DongXi (public number: zhidxcom)
Author | Cheng Qian edited | Desert Shadow
In November 2019, Fang Yu, a patient with axual axual cerebral palsy who had lost normal movement and the ability to speak due to accidental damage to the cerebellum, asked for help on Weibo that a input method called "Mouse Typing Advanced Edition III" she had used could not be used.
A few days later, the Sogou input method team contacted Fang Yu and said that it would continue to develop this input method, so that the software can help more special people have the opportunity to express. In only 8 days, the sogou input method for Fang Yu and other special people with physical mobility problems to create a limb disability input (dot input) was officially launched.
▲ Screenshot of Fang Yu's (@Leng Min Hanzi Night) asking for help Weibo
Zhao Yitao, an expert in accessibility products at Tencent's Input Method Department, said in an interview with Zhidong: "The current number of daily active users of Diandian Input has reached 100,000. ”
As a national input method, Sogou Input Method has long been concerned about the field of barrier-free input and is committed to providing better input services for people with disabilities. Since 2015, Sogou Input Method has successively launched solutions for visually impaired input, limb input (dot input), and elderly input for special groups.
Just this Thursday, tencent's Sogou input method launched the "Voices" barrier-free input public welfare plan officially launched, and the scene also released the Sogou input method "eye movement input" solution for the first time, disabled users can complete the input by turning their eyes.
The "Voice of The Crowd" barrier-free input public welfare plan is guided by the China Assistive Device Center for the Disabled directly under the China Disabled Persons' Federation, co-sponsored by Tencent's Sogou Input Method, Shenzhen Information Accessibility Research Association, and the National Disabled Persons' Supplies Development and Supply Station, and jointly with vivo, Tobii Dynavox Hearing Technology, Hannikon Technology and other industry forces to jointly help the input expression of disabled groups in the digital world.
▲The launching ceremony of the "Voice of The Crowd" barrier-free input public welfare plan
What is the "Voice of The Crowd" barrier-free input public welfare plan? How will Sogou input method rely on its own technical advantages to bring convenience to people with disabilities?
1. Build an open platform for barrier-free input
In recent years, China's Internet penetration rate has increased year by year, as of the end of June 2021, China's Internet penetration rate reached 71.60%, mobile phones, PC input methods have become our daily life, work, study, in the network to express themselves, daily communication of the main tools.
But there is a group of people who seem to have been "forgotten". According to reports, there are currently more than 85 million special groups in China, of which more than 17 million are visually impaired and more than 6 million are people with cerebral palsy. According to the data of the seventh national census, there are 260 million people aged 60 and above in China, of which 190 million are 65 years old and over. These numbers are still increasing, they are a special group of people, and they also need input methods to type words to express themselves.
With the launch of the "Voice of the Crowd" barrier-free input public welfare plan, Sogou input method will continue to use its own AI technology advantages and existing product coverage to build a barrier-free input channel for more AI developers, enterprises, and special groups.
Specifically, the "Voice of The Crowd" barrier-free input public welfare plan initially includes two aspects, namely, group demand research and analysis, and building an open platform for barrier-free input.
1. Group demand research and analysis. In order to further promote the further implementation of AI and other technologies in barrier-free facilities, in the early stage of the implementation of the plan, Sogou input method product experts will unite user representatives of special groups, The China Center for Assistive Devices for the Disabled and the Shenzhen Information Accessibility Research Association to conduct in-depth research and continuously produce barrier-free input demand reports, and optimize the application of AI and other technologies in barrier-free products. It is reported that the first issue of the "Barrier-free Input Research Report" is scheduled to be released in mid-2022.
2. Build a barrier-free input development platform. At present, the solutions of barrier-free input methods include visually impaired input, limb disability input (dot input), elder mode, eye movement input, and technical solutions such as OCR reading and AI sign language translation for different groups of people. In the future, Sogou Input Method will join hands with Tencent Technology Public Welfare Plan to open up AI and other technologies in the above input methods to the whole industry free of charge, reduce the development threshold of developers, and use open source technology to promote the landing of public welfare undertakings.
Second, AI prediction + lenovo, typing error rate reduced by 63%
Tencent Vice President Xi Xiaohu said at the launching ceremony: "Information accessibility is to 'bridge' the digital divide for people with disabilities. In 2018, Tencent opened up OCR recognition, speech synthesis, picture-to-speech and other technologies for the visually impaired, and in 2020, it opened up 'audio AI technology' for the hearing impaired, and Tencent is exploring more application scenarios for technology to help the disabled and cross the digital divide. ”
So how does Tencent build a high-quality information barrier-free "bridge" for special groups? From the perspective of the product itself, Sogou input method continuously realizes functional updates, terminal applications and technology integration, and makes a number of barrier-free input solutions more humanized through repeated polishing, optimization and upgrading.
The latest version of the barrier-free input method solution launched at the launching ceremony of the "All Voices" barrier-free input public welfare plan is aimed at the frozen crowd, jointly developed by Sogou input method and eye tracker manufacturer TobiiDynavox, which integrates eye-moving input technology with sogou input method's high-quality thesaurus, lenovo thesaurus, intelligent FM and other functions.
From a hardware perspective, the eye controller developed by TobiiDynavox uses eye-tracking technology, and users can replace the mouse and keyboard with their eyes. After the user wears the eye controller, he can stare at the target on the page with his eyes and complete the operation step by step. The eye controller is equipped with a number of sets of near-infrared light sources, which are transmitted to the eye controller through eye reflection, and the coordinate position of the fixation point is obtained through the algorithm, so that the computer can identify the position of the eye gaze and execute the instructions.
In the process of using the eye controller, all the keys on the keyboard need to be operated by the eye, and the input method is crucial in this link. The eye-controlled keyboard developed by Sogou Input Method equipped with eye controller is designed for user needs.
First of all, in order to improve the user experience, the eye-controlled keyboard designed by Sogou Input Method provides a button adsorption function, which can reduce the error rate caused by misoperation when the user looks at the button to select the operation. The eye-controlled keyboard also flexibly sets the time for the user to stare at the button, and when the user is not familiar with the use method in the early stage, he can set a longer time and adjust it in time to find a more comfortable way to use.
Secondly, the eye-controlled keyboard is also equipped with the intelligent key technology of sogou input method, for words with long or uncommon pinyin, users only need to enter a few times, the keyboard can produce "memory", automatic association of candidate words, such as "DNA nucleotide" such more specialized, uncommon nouns, after typing a few times, the user only needs to enter its initial letter "tyhthgs", you can enter this noun completely.
At the same time, in order to better integrate with the eye controller, the eye control keyboard needs to maximize the utilization of the keys in the limited space, put the user's commonly used pinyin and function keys into the home page, and other uncommonly used keys such as numbers, symbols, etc., are added to the keyboard subpage.
At present, Sogou barrier-free input method has 4 technical solutions, in addition to eye movement input, visual impairment input, limb disability input (dot input), elder mode have been put into use.
For the visually impaired group, Sogou input method launched visually impaired input, has now covered the PC side, mobile phone version, in terms of technology, Sogou input method and Tsinghua University Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory cooperation to launch intelligent key prediction function, the use of AI technology to intelligently predict the content of user input, to help visually impaired users correct errors. According to Sogou Input Method, this feature can reduce the typing error rate by 63%, increase the speed by 12%, and reduce the tedious operation of repeated modifications by visually impaired users.
Secondly, Sogou input method also adds custom screen mode and candidate gesture function, using AI for gesture recognition and reducing user operation process.
After the release of the limb disability input (dot input) developed by Fang Yu as an opportunity, sogou input method further changed the candidate in the input method to the interactive form of vowel plus rhyme according to the characteristics of Hanyu Pinyin input, which is more suitable for barrier-free people. Zhao Yitao added: "At the beginning, Fang Yu was the main customer of Diandian input, and we observed that she often typed at night, so in order to alleviate the discomfort of her staring at the screen for a long time at night, we launched green, yellow and other eye protection skins. ”
▲ Limb barrier input (dot input) interface
For a large number of elderly people, Sogou input method fully considers its needs, optimizes the keyboard interface, and optimizes the handwriting input and voice input methods that are more commonly used by the elderly.
From the perspective of the industry, Sogou input method has developed different functions for Android and iOS systems, and cooperated with a number of domestic mobile phone manufacturers to jointly create targeted and systematic information accessibility plans to help special groups enjoy the convenience of the information age.
In the Android system, Sogou Input Method has been expanded based on the accessibility service provided by the Android system and the TTS (Text To Speech from text to speech) service, adding the function of clicking on the system button to broadcast, and using the TTS service to automatically broadcast content.
In the iOS system, Sogou input method relies on VoiceOver technology in Apple's accessibility features to add functions such as gesture operation on the screen and continuous deletion. The underlying implementation principle of the barrier-free adaptation function of Sogou and Apple native input methods is the same, but Sogou input method relies on the technical accumulation in the field of input methods, and is better than the iOS native input method in terms of input accuracy, input prediction, long sentence input optimization and other features.
3. Sogou builds a dialogue platform for AI and public welfare
At the launching ceremony, Lu Shiming, vice chairman of the China Disabled Persons' Federation and president of the China Association of Volunteers for the Disabled, said: "We look forward to more technology enterprises and social forces taking action to make information barrier-free deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, so that everyone can integrate into the digital society equally and share a better digital life." ”
The participation of enterprises and the participation of everyone is the key to promoting public welfare undertakings. Since 2005, Sogou input method has launched a special input method for visually impaired people and the elderly, and now it is further starting from its own AI technology to conduct in-depth research and build a platform to provide effective data and ecological support for society and industry, and strengthen the attention to special groups.
In the future, Sogou input method will design more targeted products for more segmented special groups of people. Although the Sogou input method is only a small part of the barrier-free facilities, with the launch of the Public Voice Barrier-free Input Public Welfare Program, the voices of special groups of people can be heard by more people, so that technology can further help more people to get better development.