capito is part of the Innosuisse flagship initiative
The project focuses on accessible information and communication technologies.
As part of its new flagship initiative, the Swiss Innovation Agency (Innosuisse) has approved a four-year project with a total budget of 12.4 million Swiss francs. The aim of this project is to develop accessible information and communication technologies (ICT) for people with disabilities. capito is on board as an implementation partner together with Swiss Text and Zurich Insurance Company, among others. The project will start in 2022.
The flagship focuses on five applications in particular:
- Text simplification
- Sign language translation
- Sign language verification
- audio description
- spoken subtitles
Within the Flagship, each application represents a separate sub-project. However, there are close links between the sub-projects via shared technologies, such as artificial intelligence techniques. With its user-centered approach, the Flagship will lead to innovations that support people with hearing, visual and cognitive impairments, as well as hearing sign language learners. People with disabilities are involved in all phases of the research and development cycle.
The Flagship is led by Dr. Sarah Ebling from the Institute of Computational Linguistics at the University of Zurich. Dr. Ebling also plays a central role in the development of capito.ai, the AI-based writing assistant for easy language.
A total of four research partners, with an additional foreign research partner as a subcontractor, and six implementation partners are involved in the project. Together, the Flagship partners are among the most important players in the field of inclusive ICT in Switzerland.