Reading glasses, graph theory and why inclusive design benefits us all

Rachel Martin is the Product Manager and “accessibility champion” at Good Grants.

Last year, I reached the milestone of fifty years on this planet. While I am in excellent health, I have noticed the cracks of age beginning to appear, the most annoying of which is that I now use reading glasses. I realise I took my sight for granted in those frustrating moments when I can’t read the text on the side of a packet – I can see the words are there but can’t make out what they say. This is usually followed by a frantic search for glasses, which I will have invariably left in some unknown location in the house. I now have a set of reading glasses in almost every room.

My experience has reinforced that accessibility is for everyone and not just those with disabilities.

For instance, I always use captions when they’re available, even though I can hear. I appreciate sharp colour contrast in web design for quicker reading, and you don’t have to have arthritis to prefer lever door handles over knobs.

Accessible design may begin with the 15% of people worldwide who live with a disability, but it is built for all of us.

We have made great progress when it comes to accessible design, especially with the advancement of artificial intelligence, which has given people with visual impairments the ability to see the world around them.

One of the greatest mathematicians who ever lived, Leonhard Euler (1707-1783), laid the foundations for modern AI accessibility tools, and he coincidentally was completely blind himself when he died at 76. He reportedly said of his vision loss, “Now I will have fewer distractions.”

Euler made use of the first vision processing tool available at the time: other people’s eyes. His family and colleagues were his scribes, and they diligently wrote everything down with Euler continuing to publish an average of one paper per week until his death.

Euler’s fingerprints are all over the artificial intelligence we have today. Most computer science students are familiar with his seven bridges of Königsberg problem. Euler wanted to know whether all seven bridges in his home city could be traversed just once in a single walk. He found it was not possible and invented graph theory to prove it. This mathematics now forms the cornerstone of many of the neural networks used by AI, which means people like Euler no longer need to depend on human scribes.

Saqib Shaikh, a blind engineer at Microsoft, built on this foundation when he developed Seeing AI. The app uses the camera on your device to photograph something or someone, then reads or describes it to the user, effectively acting as their eyes. I love the app, and not just because the app described me as a 42-year-old woman rather than the 50 years that I am, but because the technology underpinning an app like Seeing AI has many other applications.

For example, my plant identification app uses the same mathematics. It converts attributes of a plant such as leaf outlines and vein patterns into a mathematical pattern, which it then compares against a verified database of existing patterns to find matches. If Euler were alive today, he could make use of the assistive tools for visual impairments, of which his own work forms the foundation, and from which we have all benefited.

Euler did not know that one day his work might support technology that would have allowed him to see. He made huge strides in mathematics despite his disability, while Saqib Shaikh uses his to drive the innovations that benefit us all.

Inclusive design doesn’t just help some of us, it helps all of us. And this foundational belief drives our product design at Good Grants, where we recognise that accessibility is an ongoing initiative. We are committed to ensuring the accessibility of our software, websites and help documentation to people with disabilities.

We always welcome feedback on our accessibility initiatives. Please relay any questions or comments to feedback@creativeforce.team.