SPEAKER: Right, ladies and gentlemen, my name is Jane McClarty, I’m your compere for this evening. Welcome to the 14th disability lecture. Marvellous to think it’s been going on for 14 years. I see some familiar faces that I think have possibly come to all 14. It seems like yesterday since the first one, to me. I should thank the organisers. Thank you to the Equality and Diversity section of the University. Thank you to the DRC, Disability Resource Centre team that has organised this and all the other lectures. Especially to Kirsty who masterminds the details of the admin so wonderfully. I should make the usual announcement that we are not expecting the fire alarm to go off so if it does go off, the exits on either side and for those who can make it to the top of the stairs there are exits there, too. Now it’s my pleasure to introduce Saqib Shaikh, who is our speaker for this evening. He is a software engineer who is working for Microsoft in the artificial intelligence and research group. He was drawn to computers by the independence they gave him. He went on to read computer science at Essex University. During his 11 years at Microsoft, Saqib has worked on a variety of products and has assisted several groups with building more inclusive software. He also continually tinkers on side projects, often focusing on empowering people with visual impairments to do more. Saqib is talking about innovating towards a more inclusive future. Let’s welcome him tonight. (APPLAUSE) SAQIB SHAIKH: Thank you very much for inviting me to speak here tonight. It’s an honour to be speaking at such a prestigious event in such a grand environment. The last time I was here at the University of Cambridge was many, many years ago when I was still at school, visiting a friend. So much has changed. As you heard, I am a software engineer. I like making things that help people. I am also blind and recently, I got to put these two things together and at Microsoft, I’ve been working on researching how artificial intelligence can be used to provide someone who is blind or visually impaired with more information about their visual environment. That brings me to the topic of this lecture tonight. Innovating Towards a More Inclusive Future. For me, technology has been a big part of my life ever since I was a kid. I went to a school for visually impaired kids, New College Worcester. For me that was an amazing environment. It helped me to learn to be independent and it took disability off the table. It was a great environment but now, looking back, I realise just how much was going on behind the scenes to make everything just so. So many hard-working teachers and support workers. And a bunch of technology too. Whether that was the assistive technologies, whether that is screen readers, magnifiers on the computers or the machines that made all the tactile diagrams that let me feel all the maps of the world that I could never understand quite. Or all the different gadgets that we had. It was in that environment that I got hooked on tech, initially. I learned to program and had a couple of invaluable mentors, older students who both, in fact, actually studied computer science at Cambridge here at St Johns College. Later, at university, I realised just how involved it can be to make things truly accessible. If there are any students in the audience tonight, you may be familiar with this. You have to make sure that you have lecture notes in the format which is accessible to you and I had to scan my books in. Unfortunately, technical books, even then and still today, are not as easy to access as they should be. So, I had to have a crew of people reading things out to me. That’s how I got through university and I did well but it was interesting challenges. I remember this one point I’d like to share with you in particular. It was at the beginning of my first year. I had to do this compulsory hardware course, which was even less accessible than most. I am a software guy, hardly hardware right? None of the notes are accessible; none of the software is accessible. I had to get a reader to sit next to me to do everything. I got through the course, but imagine someone sitting next to me and they are reading circuit diagrams. They are saying this is this, this is connected to that. I’m trying to get this in my head and then they are telling me, OK, this connects to this. It was an awful course to do. I got through it. There was one point, a vivid memory that stays with me. I called home and I was having a rant to my mum. Everything is rubbish, I don’t like anything. How am I ever going to have a career in this industry if this is how inaccessible it is; my mum calmed me down in the way that mums do. She said, "You are a programmer". You make things. Maybe one day you will make something that makes this easier for you and for others. Maybe that’s obvious but to my 18-year-old self, it was something of an epiphany. Wow, maybe one day I could use technology, the same technology which is so inaccessible now, but use that technology to solve problems for myself. That was something that stuck with me. I went on into industry. For the first 10 years plus, I didn’t want to make accessibility or blindness part of my job. Nothing wrong with that. For me personally, I wanted to prove to myself and everyone else that I could be successful in the mainstream industry. Another story related to that, when I was at school there was a competition, an engineering competition, and I had made a braille translator and there was this big do at the Millennium Dome. That dates me a bit. At the Millennium Dome, a big do and there were several judges walking round the different tables. I was excited to meet the CEO of a well-known company. He came round and seemed quite complementary and quite interested. Just as he was leaving, you’ll never make any money from this. You’d be better making Braille by the hour. That was his parting shot. Ouch! When I went into industry, I wanted to prove that I was going to make it in the mainstream but I always had these side projects at Microsoft helping out a number of teams with making the software more inclusive. Or solving different accessibility problems. That has always been a side passion of mine over all those years. A few years ago, an interesting opportunity arose to make this part of my job. Microsoft about three years ago had its first ever Hackathon. This was an opportunity for the 100,000+ employees around the world to hack on whatever interested them. Whether that was technical or other processes. I don’t mean like hackers in Hollywood movies. All the bad villains. This was the original word, to tinker, to solve problems. Faced with this incredible opportunity to spend a few days of whatever interested me, I thought what am I going to do? Again, I came back to a memory from university days. It’s funny how so many things start there. There was a friend and I sitting late at night discussing how great it would be to have a pair of sunglasses with a camera on and there would be a computer on and it would tell you to do stuff. That stuff would tell you everything that was around you. That was the dreams of teenagers. That is still a far off dream. Some small part of that might already be possible today. That’s what I did for the Hackathon project. I’ll come back to that later. That theme stayed with me. This idea of solving problems that were relevant to me. In other Hackathons, I worked on projects like how do you represent data and audio? Whether that is graphs or touch screens to investigate data through audio. One year, I got together with a hardware hacker. I found a hardware guy to put an ultrasound centre on my cane and have it vibrate depending on how far things were. This was a crazy environment. It was a privilege to be able to work on these things. Going back to that first year, what really impressed me is while there were so many business projects at that Hackathon around productivity and the internet, there was a number of projects related to disability and there was a trend of people who had disabilities themselves or knew someone or just had an interest, coming together with the team to solve a problem. One incredible project that year was the eye gaze project. It was inspired by Steve Gleason who is a former NFL American football player. He has ALS motor neuron disease, and he wrote Microsoft an email saying, I challenge you to find solutions to these problems, like how can I better communicate with my wife? The team came together inspired by that email. They made incredible things in a short amount of time, in the spirit of tinkering, coming up with prototypes. They mounted a Tablet PC in front of his wheelchair along with an eye tracker. You have a piece of software which can see roughly where the user is looking on the screen and you can have a keyboard which predicts the text, a bit like your mobile phone. That would enable someone to type faster and, as a result, speak faster too. It is really cool. I thought, what if you could drive a wheelchair? The team could describe this way better than I can. I got a video showing you. VIDEO: Steve Gleason wrote an email and he said I want to be able to move my wheelchair. I want to be independent. I want to be able to have conversations with my kiddo. I had an idea that users like me should be able to drive their wheelchairs with their eyes. A small team of innovators accepted the challenge. SPEAKER: Hackathons can be a really good way for you to get your brain out of where you are, go to someplace and advance some new thing. SPEAKER: At the end of the Hackathon, we had a baseline eye gaze keyboard and for the wheelchair, we had something that was very cobbled together. We barely got it working right when Steve was there but it was cool to be able to see the look in his eye. This is a possibility, before it was a pipedream and it could really work. SPEAKER: We did not want it to be at the end of a Hackathon. By then, we had all vehemently fallen in love with Steve and his family. We wanted to continue this project. SPEAKER: We saw the impact that this technology can have and we just got excited about it and we were fortunate to get the resources together and move forward. SPEAKER: Steve didn’t know what to expect. Within a few weeks, Microsoft had a prototype. Within a few months, they were on their way to New Orleans to connect his chair with the technology SPEAKER: Steve is a force of nature. He is honest with us, direct and specific about what has gone wrong and what he thinks we need to do to improve it. SPEAKER: There are still no treatments for the disease but because of technology, people like me are able to remain productive and purposeful for years, even decades. SPEAKER: To see him be able to chase his son around his house, he wasn’t able to do that before. That is more than powerful. It was a life changer. SPEAKER: All the things you want to do with his son are the things I want to do with my kids. Knowing we’ve been able to play even a tiny role in that has been incredible. SPEAKER: We’ve been working to take the technology into something that could be not just something that we give Steve but something we are able to take to a much broader set of people. The people we get to talk with and work with, some have passed away. We are against the clock and we know that. SPEAKER: I hate ALS with every fibre of my being. But the advantage to doing this work is that allows us to unify around a common good. SPEAKER: Technology has transformed my life and I know we are going to transform thousands of other people’s lives in the near future. When the day comes, remember you saw it here first. SAQIB SHAIKH: A group of researchers at Microsoft has taken that and is carrying on with the research. I must stress this is just research. It is just in the lab. I just want to be super clear that this is not a product or something that is out there today. It is great to be able to share this early work with you. The key point here for me is that it takes someone with knowledge, passion for disability, coming together with the creators to solve problems and make these solutions, which can be so empowering. It doesn’t necessarily require a big organisation. That might sound funny coming from someone at Microsoft but to solve small problems, you don’t need a big organisation. You don’t need someone to give you permission. I’m very passionate and I’ve seen this on different scales. It just requires, you have all the techies who have the skills to make things. You have people with personal challenges and they would like solutions to them. If you bring the two groups together, great stuff happens. On that theme, the following year, there was a different team. They decided to make tools to make it easier for people with learning differences to use some of the Microsoft products. They made an extension to the One Note product, which is for taking notes. They got together with special education teachers and students and researchers. They put in some features such as the ability to listen to a document read out, while simultaneously highlighting thus using two of your senses. Also, adjusting the font size and spacing to reduce visual crowding. Also showing words like verbs and nouns in different colours. These have been shown to aid in reading speed and comprehension. Again, I think the team can describe this really well. Let’s see another video. SPEAKER: I am a resource special education teacher. I target groups of students who need intervention for either reading, language, arts or maths. These are kids that struggle every day. To watch them grow and learn and have those aha! moments, is so rewarding to me and it just makes my heart soar. We have ADHD, dyslexia, dysgraphia. I have a student who reads a third-grade level and one who reads on a kindergarten level. I have to bridge the gap. We have been using On Note since the start of the school year. In that time, it has been transformational. When we started using One Note, I thought it would take a while to get going. Three days. It took them three days to master One Note. I have a dyslexic student who also has dysgraphia. He reads at a kindergarten level. He is 10 years old. He told me that he was stupid. When we started the school year, he read four words a minute. When we got the learning tools, he improved to 22 words per minute. I never thought in one calendar school year we would even get into double digits. He is at 22 words per minute and he stayed there. For my students, it has transformed their educational experience. I don’t know what next year will be like. I don’t know what the possibilities are. In my wildest dreams, I never thought this could be what it is. The sky is the limit SAQIB SHAIKH: Four words to 22 words a minute is really incredible. I must apologise for the visual impaired people in the audience. I know there is no audio description but hopefully the dialogue is good enough. I’m always happy to answer questions later. Even though it started as a Hackathon project, learning tools actually went on to ship as part of a Microsoft product. Also some parts of it in Microsoft Word as well. That’s available today. The features they develop we found were not only useful for people with learning differences. They were also useful for people learning English as a second language. In actual fact, they can aid anyone in increasing their reading speed and comprehension. That brings me to this idea of inclusive design. It’s a design methodology being adopted by many teams across Microsoft. Whenever a designer designs a product or service, there is some inherent bias but if you recognise what the bias is and who you are excluding with that design, then in fact you can embrace diversity and find people who would be excluded using this inclusive design methodology and then you focus in on individuals and if you solve the problems for individuals with disabilities, then we find often that you are creating a better design for everyone. You could say solve for one, extend to many. A really nice example of this is Skype Translator. This is a product which allows two people speaking different languages to communicate. For example, if I am speaking English but if I want to talk to a friend who is in France for example. I might say hello. The system will recognise what I said and translate it to French. So it would say bonjour, but in a proper French accent. Very early on in the development of this technology, an engineer Ted Hart heard about this and had a great idea. He is hard of hearing. He has not been able to make a telephone call. He thought, what if I could read what the other person was saying? Using that same technology that is called Skype translator, the team got to work and build some features so that it can now translate from one language to the same language, like English to English. One party can either be typing instead of speaking or reading instead of listening. Depending on their preferences. There are some other interesting features, like the ability to have live transcription so that someone who is reading can interrupt the person who is speaking. Let me hand it over to Ted on a video to describe some more. SPEAKER: When I was 13-year-old I lost my hearing when I got the mumps. It makes it difficult to communicate with people. My wife could only communicate by spelling out letters. When we met again, she had taught herself the alphabet, this was a successful strategy and we have been married now for 18 years. SPEAKER: Last fall, Ted came to my office to tell me about an idea he had about adapting Skype translator to a scenario useful to him. He could read the responses from people because it is transcribed. We needed something to make it more appropriate for that scenario. SPEAKER: I normally need an ASL interpreter for meetings at work. They have to be booked in advance, which isn’t always practical It doesn’t replace an ASL interpreter. SPEAKER: It was really impactful for Ted; there was a big impact on his personal life. SPEAKER: I could call my wife for the first time. There are relay services you can use to makethe call. It is really cool. She knows sign language to enter my world and I can now take a more full step into hers. SPEAKER: So I was sitting back and realising the impact this could have for me, the people here at Microsoft and for customers, people with deafness and hard of hearing all over the world. Technology can empower people to do things and make things easier. It is available now, download it, give it a try and help us to make this a better product. SAQIB SHAIKH: That has gone into the product and is available today. These features are not just for people with disabilities. Something like this is really useful if you are in an environment where you cannot speak, for example a bus or if it is difficult to hear, like a noisy environment. That is the key to inclusive design. I have been talking a lot about current prototypes from Microsoft; that is obviously the world I live in. Great work like this is going on all around the world and has for many years. And it is interesting to take a look back at history to see where do some of these technologies come from. With Skype, we saw technologies like speech recognition and text-to-speech. Those are both technologies originally designed to help people with disabilities and yet they are mainstream in every phone all over the place today. We see technologies originally inspired by disability can become part of the mainstream. My favourite story about something like that is about the now famous scientist Ray Kurzweil. Back in the 70s, early on in his career, he was on an aeroplane journey, sitting next to a blind man and he said, If I could invent anything, what would it be and the man said he’d like something that would let him read books. That is what Ray did; he built a machine the size of a washing machine, costing tens of thousands of dollars. But it would read a book. In doing that, he invented other technologies like flatbed scanners and text-to-speech. So we see this idea of specialist technologies becoming mainstream too. That takes me full circle, the successor to that big reading machine is, the ability to scan books, as I told you at the beginning, what I was using throughout my education. Back to my journey, at the very first hackathon, I developed a very prototype of the app that would let you take a picture and tell you something about what is in it. I continued working on that project, tinkering on the side and made several prototypes and got in touch with some people in Silicon Valley interested in solving that problem too. We formed the team and hacked some more. We eventually got to work on it full time, and that was my dream job it was great. In a moment, I will show you some of our research. It is still at the early phases, we can get some information about what is in a picture but we cannot describe videos in real-time. If we take an image, a snapshot, we have technology that can detect a few of the objects in it and maybe where they are in relation or text and people in the images as well. So that is what I am continuing to work on and made a video showing an early prototype, along with, which I think will convey the vision for the future as well. Let’s see that. SPEAKER: I’m Saqib Shaikh. I lost my sight when I was seven and shortly after that, I went to a school for the blind and got introduced to talking computers. It opened up a whole new world of opportunities. I joined Microsoft 10 years ago as a software engineer. I love making things that improve people’s lives and one of the things I have always dreamt of since I was at university was this idea of something that could tell you at any moment what is going on around you. SPEAKER: I think it is a man jumping in the air doing a trick on a skateboard. SPEAKER: I teamed up with like-minded engineers to make an app which lets you know who and what is around you. It is on the Microsoft intelligence based APIs, which makes it easier to understand these things. It works on smart phones. Sometimes you can talk to a big group and get no response and you wonder if everyone is listening really well or half asleep and you never know. SPEAKER: I see a 40 old man with a beard looking surprised, a 20 year old woman looking happy. SPEAKER: The app can describe the general age of the people around me, it is incredible. One of the things most useful about the app is the ability to read out text. I can use the app on my phone to take a picture of the menu and it will guide me on how to take that correct photo. SPEAKER: Move camera to the bottom right and away from the document. SPEAKER: Then it recognises the text, the heading. Years ago this was science fiction; I didn’t think it would be able to be done. But artificial intelligence is improving at a faster rate. As engineers, we always stand on the shoulders of giants, building on what came before; we have built on years of research. SPEAKER: A young girl throwing an orange frisbee in the park. SPEAKER: It is about building one step at a time, I think this is just the beginning. SAQIB SHAIKH: So weird to hear myself. But I hope that conveys some of the vision of what our research project is all about. I really hope that we can take some of the vision and build more and more pieces, add more building blocks as artificial intelligence improves. We want to add more to that. I’m honoured to work in this field. To close, I hope I have given you an idea of how I believe that technology can empower people. Technology is powerful for people with disabilities. All it takes sometimes is for the right people to come together. People with knowledge of a problem, coming together with the creators. Here at Cambridge, you have world-class computer science and engineering departments. If there is anyone with a disability, I’d encourage you to go and find your local creator. You never know what you could come up with. Thank you. (Applause) SPEAKER: Thank you so much for that, it was absolutely fascinating. I will abuse my privilege now, sitting up here by asking the first question. I’m sure there will be plenty of others. If I were to ask you what would be the thing you would invent if you could invent anything, what would your answer be? SAQIB SHAIKH: I feel lucky to work on the current research projects. It would be something that furthers this idea of telling you who and what is around you. And I think there are all these small little problems that we face in our daily life. I’d like to take them and solve them, one at a time. In terms of thinking what is the first, maybe finding an empty seat on a train might be a start. (Laughter) SPEAKER: Right, are there questions out there? There is a microphone coming to you. SPEAKER: Thank you, that was a lovely talk. So one thing I have noticed people have talked about with accessible technology is a lot of the model for funding is these bespoke technologies that are expensive and are hard for people with disabilities to pay for. Smart phones that have these things are no longer covered by assistant funds. Do you think this will that change as we have more technology moving to platforms everybody uses? SAQIB SHAIKH: That is a tough one. We do need the specialist assistive technologies. A lot of research goes into these and they are very tailor-made. At the same time, you maybe have the more inclusive design approach of different features. I know some people talk of this as a menu of customising a phone to the way you use it. For many people, that would be enough and often the cost is low enough to afford. But sometimes I think you also need very specialist technologies too. Did that answer your question? SPEAKER: Yes. SPEAKER: The Lady in red there. SPEAKER: That was a really interesting talk. This is just a comment. This lecture is part of the Cambridge Science Festival. One of the things, we have been to a lot of lectures. It was wonderful to see someone using sign language. But this is the first time in nearly the end of the fortnight, we been to at least two lectures every evening, and there hasn’t been one that has had sign language. If the powers that be could communicate with the powers that be that organise the Cambridge Science Festival, I think it is really important that at every lecture it is accessible to people who are hard of hearing. SPEAKER: Right, the gentleman up there in the black shirt. SPEAKER: On the point of history, what group of people with disabilities do you think wrote the initial book when it comes to developing technology? SAQIB SHAIKH: Well, I’m not well versed enough with all the history as to which group. Being blind myself, I know that route way better... I’m trying to think of a smart answer here. SPEAKER: Right, I think we will take another question, actually. That was a very difficult question. Over there. SPEAKER: Thank you for the talk, you mention something and didn’t come back to it. You talked about a project representing data with audio. Could you give us some more information on how that worked? SAQIB SHAIKH: It was a bit of an experiment. So, I had this idea. It is not the first time, a lot of people have this experiment with “sonification” but a simple example is if you have a line graph, you can represent the x-axis with a duration and the y-axis with pitch. You can play a sound which goes up and down in pitch. I was playing around with different ideas, for example, could you then use touchscreens to interrogate that more or speak and ask questions and get the computer to do some of the analysis for you. We experimented with different audio things like if you have a scatter graph, maybe representing different points by the computer speaking a different way. It was very experimental; I hope that gives you an idea. SPEAKER: Another question? SPEAKER: I am involved with helping a blind lady climb on a climbing wall. Climbing walls are very artificial environments, you climb from coloured holds to coloured holds. It seems your app would be amazing if one had a set of glasses which would identify where the holes were. How far they are away. Could we do it? SAQIB SHAIKH: I think we are away from that. The technology right now, we’re at the stage of analysing one photo at a time. It is very specific things. That said, never say never. You never know when things like that will enter the realms of the possible. SPEAKER: Another question at the front, a microphone coming to you. SPEAKER: Thank you. I loved your last example of the design you were working on. I wonder what the state of that is so other people can have these wonderful glasses you are working on and what the pricing is going to be. (Laughter) SAQIB SHAIKH: It is very much a research project, and it is easy to get things working in a lab but it can take a long time before you get that working in the general case for making things into a product could take years. I’m excited where the tech is going, like some of the other technologies; these are prototypes in a lab, not products, unfortunately. But I will keep working on this and I’m optimistic for the future. SPEAKER: Question over there. Pass the microphone. SPEAKER: Brilliant speech. You mentioned towards the end that it is rather nice if you can get people with issues together with people who can solve those issues. I wonder to what extent the University, perhaps more a question for the disability group, to extent the University are prepared to put together hackathons, workshops, making stuff and bringing together all those people. It is wonderful that Microsoft do it but you have limited resources and people, whereas the University has enormous resources and global reach. It is a question I think for the University, perhaps. SPEAKER: I think Microsoft has a fair amount of resources. (Laughter) SPEAKER: That is a very good question. I don’t know if there is anyone here from the computing department. SPEAKER: I was just going to answer. We do have them at the lab, hackathons and things. If the gentleman is interested, we can find out more. The University is actively involved in things like that. I’m sure there is more. SPEAKER: There was a question here. SPEAKER: It is the first person who asked about technology. I went to a talk by Richard Lochner, who is working on an app that you could describe using humans to describe pictures. You need a data connection and it costs a lot of money, would your app be complimentary to that? Does it go beyond that? Did you integrate that in some way? SAQIB SHAIKH: Absolutely complimentary. There are a number of apps that are crowd sourced. A human is at the other end, you take a photo and instead of having a computer describe. I think that is really useful today. Artificial intelligence makes it more scalable when a human is not available. Or maybe in the future again, a lot of this is research. I think we need to go down this route and in the future they might be able to do different things and availability. There is also the whole privacy; you might not want something going out to a stranger on the internet. I think they are definitely complimentary. SPEAKER: Any other questions? There is one just there. SPEAKER: I’m working with CamSight to do a three-dimensional crossword for blind people. Has anybody done it yet and I can stop working on it? (Laughter) SAQIB SHAIKH: I love it. I want one. I have not heard of anyone doing three-dimensional crosswords but yes. Get in touch, I’d love to see that. SPEAKER: Another question over there. SPEAKER: Hello, I am a man with a grey beard say you can picture it. I was recently at the meeting of the British assistive technology association, which brings together many manufacturers and developers. A colleague of yours from Microsoft was at that meeting. As he described this, there was this rollercoaster of emotions in the room in which the developers saw their business model went up in smoke. And the could be millionaires by selling out to Microsoft. How do you work with people outside of Microsoft, so you’re not reinventing the wheel first and foremost, but also so the people who have spent years working in this gets a fair crack of the whip. SAQIB SHAIKH: I don’t think I can speak to that specific situation but I do know that my colleagues at Microsoft are always working with the assistive technology vendors and those communities and, again, I don’t know any more specifics than that. We definitely want to collaborate and work with those companies too. SPEAKER: There is a question right at the back. SPEAKER: Hello, I am a lady with long hair, wearing glasses. I’m sitting down, definitely not jumping on a skateboard. I’m interested in the title of the talk and we have seen some examples of what is possible in the videos you showed. I’d really like to know where you see this technology and other types of innovation in the future taking us and paint us the picture of the inclusive future you would like to see. SAQIB SHAIKH: Wow. It depends how far in the future, but I kind of want, I imagine this world. You see things today, like Siri, Cortana, and all these personal assistants. They do very basic tasks. I imagine a world where I might have some kind of digital assistant, which will help me fill in the gaps with whatever my personal situation. Maybe it will help me with visual things. A personal assistant will help someone who can’t hear with auditory things, and I guess I look at it as you will have artificial intelligence which supplements everyone’s abilities. That is not just with people with traditional disabilities but everyone is different. Everyone has something they cannot do. I imagine a world of artificially intelligent assistants that will fill in for you and level the playing field. That is a far-off dream; it would be amazing to live there. SPEAKER: I agree, thank you. SPEAKER: Do you think we have time for one or two more questions? The hand is going up. SPEAKER: I’m another guy with a grey beard. I have been fascinated to hear about how technology can provide speech. I have a stammer myself and one of the things, one of the manifestations of my stammer is that I get a block and I cannot say the word I want to say. I’d be fascinated to know how technology can actually provoke speech and stimulate the vocal cords to say the word we want to say. SAQIB SHAIKH: That would be great and, again, I’m sure there are. There may well be researchers out there working on this, I don’t know specifically about this field. I hope we can have technology to help with that too. SPEAKER: One more question. SPEAKER: I’m a middle-aged guy in a suit. I wonder what you see for driverless cars as assistive technology. SAQIB SHAIKH: I’m really excited about driverless cars myself. No more delays on trains. But more seriously, as someone who cannot drive as visually impaired, it will be incredibly useful. I look forward to the day when driverless cars are here. You will also need to solve many other problems. I hope that the people making driverless cars consider those too. For example, if there is no human behind the wheels of a taxi, who will help you get in or out? Or if the car get stuck somewhere, who will tell you why it got stuck. I look forward to driverless technologies and I hope that they consider all the assistive angles too. SPEAKER: I think we have to end the formal questions here, because as ever, there are drinks in the room where you probably came in. I’m sure Saqib will still be here for informal questions. Can we please thank Saqib again. (Applause)