Artificial intelligence (AI) is the buzzword of the day, and it seems to be everywhere. It’s in our phones, it’s in our search engines and social media, and it’s being used by many of the companies and organizations we work with every day. For researchers and developers, AI may offer new ways to collect and examine data, test hypothesis, and understand results. Researchers and developers from the NIDILRR community have been using AI, machine learning, and large language models for more than 30 years, with early projects using AI to support decision making and helping people with visual impairments access graphic interfaces. The latest projects build on these early innovations, creating technology and interventions that support independence across the lifespan.

Here are some of the latest NIDILRR-funded projects that are working in this space:

• Addressing Reading Disparities for Students with Disabilities by Building Background and Vocabulary Knowledge uses generative AI and natural language processing algorithms to develop Background Knowledge Builder, assistive reading technology to improve both breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge for students with disabilities.
• Artificial Intelligence Assisted Inclusive Diabetes Telecoaching Self-Management Program brings AI into a platform that offers an individualized, family-focused, lifestyle modification telehealth intervention to help people with disabilities and type 2 diabetes.
• Development and Community Evaluation of a Real-Time System for Monitoring, Feedback, and Training to Prevent Pressure Injuries in Individuals with Spinal Cord Injury takes advantage of advanced sensing and AI technologies in a novel smart system aimed at changing pressure relief activity behavior in manual wheelchair users with spinal cord injury.
• FIDDLE – FIT (for) Intellectual and Developmental Determinations (for) Long-Term Employment integrates AI into a system designed to assist adult job seekers with disabilities to increase informed choice regarding their job interests and facilitate awareness of job postings relative to those interests and skills.
• GOALS – Goal Oriented Automated Learning System to Enhance the Communication of Task Assignments from Supervisors to Employees with an Intellectual Disability (ID) includes AI-assisted task analysis tools to help employees with ID better understand job tasks and to help job coaches better support their employees to successfully complete those tasks.
• INTEGRA: Generative Intelligent Video Modeling to Support the Participation of Latino English Learners (LELs) with Disabilities brings AI into a cloud platform for creating short videos to facilitate acquisition of cultural competence skills for these students, fostering inclusion and participation.
• Kids Like Me Bookshelf to Provide Role-Model Stories to Help Build Self-Esteem and Self-Efficacy for Students with a Vision Impairment enlists generative AI to assist adults with visual disabilities as co-writers in creating relatable stories to help build the self-esteem and self-efficacy of students with these disabilities.
• The Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center (RERC) for Mobile Rehabilitation (mRehab) develops a repository with an AI core trained on historical data from more than 500,000 users of digital health and rehabilitation technologies to aid researchers and developers in understanding factors associated with successful mRehab outcomes, predict therapy adherence and engagement, and develop algorithms to support patients’ progress.
• The RERC on Blindness and Low Vision leverages AI for a “human-in-the-loop” approach to video description and developing AI-based tools for micro-navigation tasks.
• The RERC on Universal Access to Information and Communication Technology is exploring and developing strategies to individualize generative AI systems to make them provide better results tailored to each individual with a disability, starting with systems for visual question answering for people with visual disabilities.
• The Sign Language Detection for Videoconferencing (SLDVC) Project uses AI and computer vision technologies, such as sign language detection, to spotlight signers in videoconference platforms.

Researchers and developers are just beginning to truly explore how AI can support independence and participation of people with disabilities across the lifespan. We can’t wait to see what these projects will accomplish, and what’s next for AI and disability!