the latest disability tech with object recognition, sign to text translation and snow feet. over the past few years, some of the most fascinating technologies we've featured on the show have been the ones that help people with disabilities. as the world's first bionic games proved, the possibilities now emerging offer so much potential, whether it be in mobility, sight or hearing, we've seen how life—changing technology is tantalisingly close. but how long before it really starts to impact people's lives for real? this weekend sees the international day of people with disabilities and that's a great chance for us to devote a whole programme to the latest tech developments in the area. we start in rochester in upstate new york, which has the highest number of deaf or hard of hearing people per capita in the us. the unique combination of this community and the technical institute in the area is really starting to drive innovation. paul carter went to investigate. rochester institute of technology and its college, national technical institute for the deaf, are now at the forefront of developing and testing new technologies that help deaf people to communicate. one technology is uni, an innovation that aims to live translate sign language into text and speech. uni's cocreator alex gave me a demo of a prototype the company are hoping to roll out to airports soon. i'm going to start by sticking my hands in here. i sign the sign for check. computer: i want to check my flight. wow! your flight is on time. as you noticed, it actually came up on the screen as i said that. the system works by using sensors with two cameras that detect individual points on the joints and fingers and renders them into the software to interpret the individual signs, a task more complicated than it might first sound. some signs are naturally doing it overand overagain, bag or wear. computer: this bag is a carry on. that's part of the challenge and the complexity of our applications because we have to be able to filter all of that out, so how does the software know you're not signing bag, bag, bag, just bag. it's safe to say assistive technology for deaf people has come a long way in a relatively short space of time. here at the rochester school of the deaf, this museum and the items within it really highlight the rate of change of technology that aids communication for deaf and hard of hearing people, from things that look fairly primitive to us now, from ear trumpets to speaking tubes, to the cutting edge technology, such as live translation we're seeing today. the advancement of technology represents an opportunity for the advancement of deaf people in the workplace. rit and ntid started experimenting with speech recognition in the classroom so deaf or hard of hearing students who may not know sign language can participate inclusively. lecturer chris campbell's sign language is being translated by an interpreter, whose speech is being captured and converted into text to be displayed on the board in real—time. i find that it helps me a lot. i mean, when the teacher is signing, i have an interpreter voicing for me, if i miss something while taking notes i can look at the screen and see what the teacher has said. it's helpful. one of the best things i've found on the laptop, when you can project it to your screen, you can see the closed captioning on your laptop. it allows you to save transcripts so you can use for future reference. here at rit, we provide 25,000 hours of captioning every year for our deaf and hard of hearing students who are in classes primarily with a hearing professor who is speaking their lecture. we thought one way we can cover those uncovered hours is to use automatic speech recognition. asr captioning has been improved a lot in the past few months. it wasn't really possible last year because the error rate was so high, but now asr has improved to the point where we feel very confident in being able to pilot the programme to see how well it works. and we can also make improvements with the language model. one of the main challenges of speech recognition has been finding a way for deaf and hearing people to communicate in situations where there isn't an interpreter around. these students are using a special instant messaging app developed at the university. we all know how inaccurate speech recognition can in this app users are notified when some words can't be trusted, an invaluable tool when the user is solely relying on its accuracy to communicate. i think automatic speech recognition is just getting started really and it's going to be improving. i think it opens up a whole new avenue that hasn't been possible before. we want to become the hub for really experimenting and looking for solutions to reduce the communication barriers that separate deaf and hearing people. that was paul carter. now, in the uk, around 5% of all railjourneys are made by those with a disability or a long—term illness. that equates to around 85 million rail journeys every year. now, while not all disabled people require assistance, a quarter have reported problems with using public transport. the rail company london midland is hoping to improve accessibility for its disabled passengers with a new app, passenger assist, and we asked emily yates to try it out for us. i'm emily yates and i'm just planning my train journey to birmingham. it requires a fair bit of advanced booking. i'm confident travelling by myself, but i'm not a huge fan of the train, which is actually why i'm making this journey. i've heard about an app in development called passenger assist that could be a game—changer for disabled travellers. thank you! i think anybody watching this who's disabled will probably agree with me that you can have some pretty horrific travel journeys if you're disabled. i've been left on the train before, i've booked assistance and somebody has said, "yeah, we're going to come and meet you," and i've been left on the train unable to get off and i've had to go four orfive stops down the line to be able to come back again so i'm really excited to see what this app has to offer. thank you! i've got this new app which is currently in development and i'm just about to fill in my own profile. what's brilliant about this app is it asks things like, "do you need room for a guide dog, do you have a hearing impairment, do you need a ramp, do you need help buying a ticket?" so, roxanne, i've added my profile details and now i've just planned a journey. this is obviously in development but this is how it would work. i've put in myjourney and now it should come up on your phone any minute. here you are. you've got my picture and everything so you know exactly what i'll look like. i know what you look like, know what to expect, i press "i'm here to help." brilliant. i can send you a message saying i'm here, my name is roxanne. 0k. back on the train for me and now i have this. passenger assist is being developed by start—up transreport under the guidance of london midlands lab. we've brought a staff phone on the train too so we can see how the app works for them. so right now the phone is tracking both the staff member and the passenger. we're obviously in the same place so you can see the two dots are quite close together. they're using the technology such as bluetooth beacons, wi—fi, ag, gps, we can use multiple tools. you know exactly what carriage i'm in even. yes, down to the carriage, we can pinpoint less than one metre to your location and find out which carriage, which train and the direction of travel you're going in as well. that's all well and good for staffed stations, but how would it work at unmanned stations? well, the app is still in development, so it's making good progress but we do have this challenge with understaffed stations. what we would want to do is get you to the nearest accessible station to get you on your way. and it's notjust about the app. transreport is also making trackable wristbands and these key fobs, they'll be available for those unable to use phones as easily. let's face it, in a world where we can now track our pizza by the minute, having to book train assistance 2a hours in advance seems a little old school and this way staff will have information at theirfingertips too. transreport hope to roll out the app across the london midland service early next year and the plan is for the entire uk rail network to be able to access it byjune, 2018. if there's one thing disabled travellers need that the current system doesn't provide its the reassurance that someone will be there to help and not leave them stranded when getting on or off the train. hello and welcome to the week in tech. it was the week where the world's largest lithium ion battery was turned on in australia. assembled by tesla and designed to store energy from a nearby wind farm, it can power 30,000 homes for one hour. an a! robot called sophia started crowd funding for more brainpower. instagram revealed a pregnant beyonce picture was the most liked 2017 so far and dogs were the most liked face filter. speaking of selfies, facebook‘s new security system may be asking you for one to prove you're not a bot when logging on, and uber made headlines again, this time it was accused of using ex—cia agents to spy on rivals also developing self driving tech. plus it was revealed their data breach reported last week affected 57 million users' details. robots have been flexing their muscles, lifting 1,000 times their own weight. these origami—inspired bots from mit mimic real muscles, being built with soft materials to make them a bit more human friendly. universities across the world are working on these types of highly dextrous robots. and finally, good old—fashioned lego is getting its own augmented reality app. the lego ar—studio will bring to life some of the most popular sets, so just as you thought the kids were sitting happily not having any screen time, well, out comes the app. accessnow really began with my own reality. someone using a wheelchair to get around, i'm consistently frustrated when i show up at places and i don't know if they're accessible or not until i get there. countless times i show up and there are steps or other barriers that prevent me from doing the things that i want. and so i was really motivated to try and solve this problem and the way that we've gone about doing that is by creating a mobile app that can simply allow people, who've experienced accessibility needs, to share information about what is accessible on their own communities and around the world. it starts by selecting a place, then rating that place as accessible or partially accessible. patio access only or not accessible. you can go one step further and add a description. so you can say things like, i showed up at this place, the customer service was fantastic. so this cafe looks like it's not accessible. there's two steps here at the entrance. but when i look at my app, i can see there's an alternative entrance through the building here, that will let me into the cafe. so let's check it out. i think for me the main magic, the most exciting part about accessnow, is that the information is all crowd sourced from people who have experienced accessibility needs in their own life, or are just motivated to get involved and share information. we started in toronto, with a couple of 100 pins, and now we've reached over 20,000 pins throughout the world. but we really want to make this a global movement. before accessnow, i think that people each kind of had their own internal maps in their head of what places are accessible, what works for them in their own communities. but the second you step outside of your comfort zone of where you live and your neighbourhood, accessibility can become really challenging. there are many times where people who have mobility needs, they're isolated in many ways and it's simply because, you know, from the way i see it, it's not people who are disabled but it's our environments that are disabling. so if we can remove the barriers that restrict people from engaging with their communities, with their workplaces, with their lifestyles, i think we can come to a much more inclusive world for everyone. that was maayan ziv, in toronto. now, running a marathon, fancy it? no, me neither. but for simon wheatcroft it's a regular occurrence. we first met him a couple of years ago when he just ran an ultramarathon in namibia. that's 150 miles. now, i should at this point say that simon is blind, so knowing where to run is as much of a problem as the running itself. in namibia, he used audio from a smartphone to guide him. since then, as a programmer and inventor, he's developed his own tracker to guide him while he runs. and technology allowing navigation and visualisation of the world, both outside and in, is hopefully about to become a bit easier. we asked simon to investigate. my name is simon wheatcroft and i'm a huge fan of technology. for the past few years i've really been using technology to push the boundaries of possibility. and recently i became the first blind person to attempt a city marathon solo. so a few weeks ago in new york i used prototype technology to run unaided for 15 miles, until unfortunately the prototype didn't quite make it. for a blind person, mobility is always a key issue. but even things around the house, it's as simple as identifying different products in the kitchen or even identifying different articles of clothing, being able to sort of identify objects remains a constant problem. processing. coffee on the table. so one of the interesting breakthroughs in object detection recently has been a product from microsoft called seeing ai. it's just an app which runs on an iphone. seeing ai uses bar codes to recognise objects. so you just point the camera at a object. one of the really powerful things that seeing a! can do is simple text recognition. paracetamol. easy to swallow... multigrain, vitamin d, wholegrain, cereal, rice, sugar, salt flavouring, colour. one thing that's really nice is it can do a bit of machine learning. it can recognise people. so you can just point your phone at somebody. big neil, seven feet away. in case you didn't catch that, that was big neil, seven feet away. one of the main issues is that al algorithms usually identify objects in groups. what i really need is something to identify objects in detail, so don'tjust say a t—shirt, or a cup, but identify that specific character and that's exactly what ibm are working on. they're using watson, their a! platform, to distinguish between similar objects. the prototype app is called personal object recogniser and if it works it'll be pretty exciting. first i had to do the training to get to grips with it. ok, so when you are ready and when you have your table lined with some objects, we can do start training. what objects would you like? i had to take at least ten good pictures of an object against a solid background. now, with the model trained, we're able to identify similar objects? flower mug. while in the prototype stage, i found the prototype really tricky. i really liked that it was a voice guided, so i was able to do it independently. i've got that connection with physical objects again. you know, photos and mugs and t—shirts. it got to the point where there was no distinction between them for me. now, if i spend the time to train it and tag it, i can get that individualisation back again. it's great when you are doing products in the kitchen or even recognising a scene, but there are certain objects that mean a lot to me. simon, sea. so to be able to tag them and then find them and recall me, it gives me that memory. that's really giving me back something that i lost many years ago. it leaves me really hopeful for the future. simon, neil running. that was simon wheatcroft. and from simon's running guide to full on robotic limbs, we are seeing more and more tech advances that promise to help disabled athletes to compete in sports that were previously inaccessible to them. our reporter kat hawkins had her legs amputated ten years ago and she's been trying out some new feet which could help amputees to carve up the slopes this winter. i've come to dorset orthopaedic, a private company that fits amputees with prosthetic legs, from running blades to hyperrealistic looking limbs. one sport that's always been very hard for me is snowboarding, because my normal feet are designed specifically for walking. but here, they've got some feet that could make that easier. the requirements of a foot are quite different with skiing compared to walking. with normal walking, you need a foot that has a fairly small range of movement that gives you energy back, so as you roll over the foot you get some push off at the end to help your walking. with skiing you need more movement in the foot to compensate for the uneven surface and you also need some shock absorption, so when you go over a bump or you land on the ski you need some of that shock taken out and that's what this does. while i'm left to my own devices, kevin agrees to fit my legs with some of these feet so i can give them a go. this requires a lot of honing and alignment to make sure i'm not pushed too far forwards or backwards. ta—da! my legs! so i'm quite intrigued as to how these are going to feel. i actually have no idea. oh, wow. if you push your weight forwards, you should be able to feel the movement in the ankle. oh, wow. oh, yeah, there! that sensation i've not felt in the ten years since being an amputee. these feet work by putting air into an adjustable cylinder, which controls the amount of resistance in the foot. more air and more resistance. as well as giving this movement, shock absorption in the foot means that going over rocks or bumps is easier. but they're not cheap. with the price of £2500 each, it means only some people can get access to them. it's clear that they're not for walking. they're very, very rigid, very square and very hard. but if i let my mind go and imagine myself snowboarding, which i've done badly in the past, i can feel that and they move and that's weird, because i have not felt my feet move in that way for ten years. there's only one thing left to do and it's try the feet out on some proper snow. i've come to an indoor slope, but i've got to admit i'm feeling very nervous. this is emma gillespie, a prosthetist who's agreed to come with me to fit the feet and help me try them out. so you've boarded on these before. yeah. and how was that? hard. but you did it. yeah. so, one leg. this is what you don't see about being an amputee. when i've snowboarded previously on my normal walking feet, it's been really difficult. but these offer much more and the way they're set up offers a natural bent on my knees, a stance that's almost impossible on my usual legs. ok, here we go. oh, she's going! try and think about your posture a bit. and a turn! woohoo! ok, so it's been awhile since i boarded and expecting an instant result is probably asking a too much, but the best thing for it is to keep throwing myself down this slope and see what happens. despite the technology of these feet, there's only so much they can do when it comes to hitting the slopes. the real work is definitely still coming from the person. and if you're not very good, they're not going to stop you from falling. laughs i'm soaking wet. that last fall has drenched me. but it's amazing when you merge technology and disability. it's about giving people independence and the feeling that they can try things that they perhaps thought weren't there for them. so it's fun, but now i want these feet and they're expensive. that was kat and that's it for this special programme for the international day for people with disabilities. we'll obviously carry on reporting this stuff throughout the year, as we always do, but you can keep a special eye on the bbc‘s disability stories online. thanks for watching and we'll see you soon. hello. it's been a bitter week for some parts of the uk but it is at least a little less cold this weekend. further afield, if you're keeping an eye on the second test in adelaide, it's warmer but we did have some interruptions because of showers on saturday. fewer showers sunday. still a brisk breeze, though. and actually here, temperatures are a little below par. they should recover as we head towards midweek. despite an increasing cloud on saturday, we did have a little late evening sunshine in kent. i'm hopeful that we will see a little bit more sunshine through the day ahead and slightly less cold conditions, particularly in the south. but at the moment, we've still got quite a bit of cloud. it's trickling its way southwards. they're weak weather fronts, really, but they're bringing some patchy rain and drizzle with misty low cloud and hill fog. to the north, yes, the cloud does break and clear and it could turn a tad chilly to start the morning up in the north—east of scotland. perhaps a touch of frost, a little bit of fog here. but for many, it shouldn't be frosty first thing. but it will be rather grey and murky. hill fog around, patchy drizzle as well, and this weather front may well drag its heels across southern parts of england, across the west and into the west of wales. it'll be with us across northern ireland and we may see a little bit of early brightness across antrem and down. it should be a decent start to the day across scotland. more sunshine here. still a few showers and a brisk wind in the north—east. still the potential for some morning fog and frost in the glens but that should lift and we should see some good spells of sunshine. and gradually, that cloud will thin and break across the rest of southern britain but it may hang around in cornwall, in western parts of wales and it drifts eastwards across northern ireland to western scotland, so the west of northern ireland may see some brighter spells later in the day. in contrast to yesterday, probably a little bit cooler in the north—east but actually feeling a bit milder further south as temperatures won't be quite so low to start the day. then, through the night ahead, we'll see the cloud gradually easing back eastwards, but where there are breaks in the cloud, yes, it will turn chilly, but also we could have some fog for the monday morning rush across east anglia, the south—east, the east midlands in particular. but otherwise it's here where, once the fog clears, we should see some brightness and some sunshine again to start our week. relatively mild compared with last week, nines and tens, but there will quite a bit of cloud, showery rain coming in, although it will be light and patchy because it is under the influence of high pressure for the next two or three days. this high pressure isjust keeping those weather fronts at bay but this does have our name on it. this is going to come in for wednesday. it looks particularly nasty, actually, some wet and windy weather to keep our eye on. but, between now and then, fairly quiet or benign conditions. as ever, there's plenty more more on the website. bye— bye. this is bbc news. i'm reged ahmad. our top stories: donald trump admits he sacked his former top aide michael flynn for lying to the fbi. —— donald trump is facing accusations of obstruction of justice after admitting he sacked his former top aide michael flynn for lying to the fbi. as clashes continue in yemen, the former president, whose forces are fighting the saudi—led coalition, says he's ready to talk. political crisis in honduras — the military enforces a curfew after protests over the disputed election. and the remarkable story of charlie, the 8—week—old baby who's had a heart transplant. hello and welcome to bbc news.

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