How European disability tech startups are leveraging AI

Improving life People with disabilities have a laudable goal, but accessibility technology hasn’t traditionally been popular with VCs. In 2022, disability technology companies have attracted around. 4 billion dollars In early-stage investment, a portion of which was FintechIntake of, for example.

One reason is that disability tech startups are often considered very good at achieving business viability — at least at the scale that venture capital demands. By definition, they are assumed Building for a minority. However, some startups in the space are also starting to serve a broader population — and some are starting to throw in AI. Always helps.

Both cases are a balancing act: the broader business case needs to be understood without losing sight of the startup’s mission statement. Meanwhile, the AI ​​needs to take advantage of the non-gimmicky way to pass the due diligence sniff test.

Some accessibility-focused startups understand these needs, and their strategies are worth considering. Here are four European startups that are doing just that.

Visualizing

Visualizing Leverages AI to improve the lives of the hearing impaired. The Spanish startup’s focus is on safety and autonomy – including voice-recognition AI that recognizes fire alarms and baby cries in the home. “AI is very important to our business,” CEO Minel Alkaid told TechCrunch last month.

The firm offers users an app that also serves as a companion to Visualfy Home, its hardware suite consisting of three detectors and a main device. It also entered the public sector with Visualfy Places – not a coincidental start. Recently raised funds From Renfe, Spain’s national state-owned railway company.

One of the reasons Visualfy is gaining traction on the B2B side is the need to provide access to public spaces, especially when health and safety is on the line.

In an interview, Alcaide explained that equipment and PA systems Visualfy will install in venues like stadiums can also monitor air quality and other metrics. In the EU, meeting these other targets can help companies get subsidies while doing the right thing for deaf people.

The latter is still very much in mind for Visualfy, which is set up as a B Corp and employs both hearing and non-hearing people. Involving deaf people every step of the way is a moral stance – “nothing for us without us.” But it’s also common sense for better design, Alkaid said.

crisp

People with total hearing impairment are a small part of a large and growing group. By 2050, 2.5 billion people Some degree of hearing loss is likely. For a number of reasons, including stigma and cost, many people will not wear hearing aids. This is the audience that Dutch B2B startup Audus Technologies is targeting with its product, crisp.

Knisper uses AI to make speech more intelligible in environments like cinemas, museums, public transport and work calls. In practice, this means splitting the audio and mixing it back into a clear track. It does this without adding to background volume noise (something not every hearing aid company can say), making it comfortable for anyone to listen to, even without hearing loss.

Audus founder Marciano Ferrier, a former ENT doctor, explained that it was not possible to achieve similar results before AI. Knisper was trained on thousands of videos in multiple languages, with variations such as background noise and distorted speech. It took work, but Odds is now moving beyond the development phase and focusing on adoption, managing director Joost Torn told TechCrunch in February.

“We are already working with a number of museums, including the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston,” said Tavern, a former MP and diplomat who spent time in the US. , where Anne Frank’s audiobook is accessible to the hearing impaired, and now we have a workspace solution.

The B2B go-to market is not an easy path, so it makes sense for Audus to focus on clients like museums. They are often noisy, which can make audio guides difficult for anyone to hear. Using Knisper’s technology to make it more intelligible benefits the general public, not just the hearing impaired, which makes adoption easier.

Whisp

Fellow Dutch startup Whisp Also focuses on speech, but from a different angle. As TechCrunch reported from CES earlier this year, its technology replaces whispered speech. In a natural voice in real time.

Whispp’s primary target audience is “currently an underground group of 300 million voice-impaired people worldwide who have lost their voice but still have a good voice”. Site Explains

For example, people with voice disorders that leave them only able to whisper or use their esophageal voice. Or those who stutter, like CEO Joris Castermans. He knows very well how his speech is less affected when he whispers.

For people with reduced articulation due to ALS, MS, Parkinson’s or stroke, there are already solutions like text-to-speech apps — but they have downsides such as longer delays. For those who are still able to articulate, this can be quite a trade-off.

Thanks to audio-to-audio AI, Whispp is able to provide them with a voice that can be produced in real-time, is language agnostic and sounds real and natural. If users are able to provide a sample, it can even sound like their own voice.

Because there’s no text in between, Whispp is also more secure than alternatives, Castermans told TechCrunch. This could open up use cases for non-silent patients who need to have confidential conversations, he said.

It’s unclear how much consumers without voice problems will be willing to pay for Whispp’s technology, but it also has several monetization avenues to explore with its core audience, such as subscriptions it offers to its users. Receives for Voice Calling app.

Acapella

Whispp highlights the need some people have to store their voice for later use. known as Voice bankingIt is this process that Acapela hopes to facilitate with a service Started last year.

Acapella Group, which was bought by Swedish tech accessibility company Tobi Dynavox for €9.8 million. In 2022has been in the text-to-speech space for Many decadesbut it is only recently that AI has replaced the picture for voice cloning.

The results are much better and the process is also fast. This will lower the bar for voice banking, and although not everyone will do it yet, there may be demand for people who know they are at risk of losing their voice after being diagnosed with certain conditions.

Acapela does not charge for the initial phase of the service, which consists of recording 50 sentences. It is only when and if they need to install Voice on their devices that users have to purchase it, either directly through Acapela or through a third party (partner, reseller, National Health Insurance Program or by others).

In addition to the new possibilities opened up by AI, the above examples show some of the avenues that startups are exploring to expand beyond their primary target of consumers with disabilities.

Part of the thinking is that a large addressable market can increase their expected revenue and spread out costs. But for their clients and partners, it’s also a way to stay true to it Definition of Access As in “the standard of being accessible to or usable by everyone, including those with disabilities.”