Smart rings, meet accessibility tech
Consumer-grade wearable tech is wading further and further into more concrete health applications, from perimenopause to mental health. So, it’s unsurprising that more disability-specific applications for these devices are appearing in research and the market.
The latest: A new smart ring from a Cornell University research team tracks fingerspelling, an aspect of American Sign Language (ASL).
- The tool, called SpellRing, can help input text into computers and smartphones in real time.
- While fingerspelling is only a part of ASL, used to spell out words without corresponding signs (e.g., proper nouns, technical terms), the research team hopes to eventually develop the device to continuously track and translate entire signed words and sentences in the language.
- The device will be presented this month at the Association of Computing Machinery’s conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), April 26-May 1 in Yokohama, Japan.
How does it work?: The SpellRing relies on micro-sonar technology and artificial intelligence.
- A user wears the device on their thumb. From there, the ring’s built-in microphone and speaker send and receive inaudible sound waves that track the user’s finger movements.
- A built-in gyroscope also tracks the user’s hand motion.
- The device’s proprietary deep-learning algorithm processes the sonar data and interprets the fingerspelled letters with an accuracy rate between 82 and 92 percent.
The question of adoption: As with any consumer device, one of the biggest design challenges is creating not just a product that works but one that intended users like to use and will therefore adopt.
- The SpellRing is not the first device to recognize fingerspelling in ASL. However, previous such technologies have struggled to take hold in deaf and hard-of-hearing communities, largely due to “bulky and impractical” hardware, said study lead author Hyunchal Lim.
- Smart rings are having a moment. In case you need a reminder, we wrote a primer on the biggest players a few months ago. Part of the reason behind the uptick in popularity is how sleek and simple they are to users, allowing them to wear a socphisticated device while not appearing to at all.
- As such, this product reminds us of the lip-reading smart glasses we covered a year ago, which also presented sophisticated accessibility technology in an unobtrusive format while capitalizing on the growing popularity of glasses-based devices.
Overall, this story is a reminder that not only is user-centric design important in medtech, but so is alignment with consumer trends.