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October 01, 2024

Royal National Institute of Blind People makes the UK more accessible with Microsoft Azure AI

The Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) works to remove societal barriers for people with blindness and sight loss. It converts clients’ communication into accessible formats, which required writing custom code and hand-fixing mistakes.
RNIB developed an AI-based solution to streamline and scale its accessible document service. Using Azure AI Services including Document Intelligence and Neural Voice, it quickly and accurately converts letters to braille, audio, and large print formats.
The new AI-powered solution drastically reduces the time needed to convert communications into the different formats. This empowers RNIB to serve more clients quickly, generating more revenue for its mission.
RNIB

Doctors found a tumor in Tony’s brain when he was a teen, which caused degenerative sight loss. When he was registered blind in his thirties, he struggled to adapt and mostly gave up on being active. Decades later, though, a friend invited him to train for a 5k and did not give up until Tony agreed. “I never imagined I could run with limited vision. But with the support of people around me, I can do this,” Tony says. He now advocates for other people who are blind or partially sighted to try a sport, including through the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB). He says, "Just because we can’t see or can’t see fully, doesn’t mean we can’t do. We've just got to believe in ourselves, and magic will happen.”

RNIB works to eliminate barriers for people who are blind and partially sighted and to build a fully accessible society. Tracing its history back more than 150 years, the UK nonprofit provides advice on everything from assistive technology to home adaptations, helps people receive their disability benefits, and advocates for a more accessible world. It also converts documents into accessible formats so businesses, government agencies, and the National Health Service (NHS) can communicate in people’s preferred format, for example in braille, large print, and audio formats.

RNIB developed an AI-based solution to streamline and scale up this accessible document service. Using Microsoft Azure AI services, RNIB’s new Mailings solution drastically reduces the time needed to convert communications into the different formats to ensure that documents are accessible to the people receiving them.

“Newer technologies like AI are making us more scalable so we can fill a gap across the UK,” says Clint Pearson, Senior Developer at RNIB.

The stakes are high, as RNIB converts documents relating to prescriptions, banking, welfare services, and other critical and time-sensitive messages. “It’s essentially a fundamental right to get that information in the format you can access,” says Aidan Forman, Director of Technology and Digital Transformation at RNIB. “Providing that is genuinely life-changing. It enables blind and partially sighted people to fully participate in society.”

 

We’re trying to push the boundaries of the art of what’s possible. It’s been a continual process of experiment, refine, and demonstrate what we can do with Azure AI to help make society more accessible for all.

Aidan Forman, Director of Technology and Digital Transformation, RNIB

Streamlining accessibility offerings

RNIB converts hard copies and digital versions of documents into braille, audio formats, large print, Welsh, and other accessible formats. The UK-based nonprofit, with offices across England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, organically developed separate workstreams for each of these types of documents, but writing custom code and hand-fixing mistakes the software made required a massive amount of staff time.

RNIB is streamlining its conversion workstreams into a solution called Mailings. It uses Microsoft Azure AI services to automatically convert documents, from a mortgage application to an explanation of a medication’s potential side effects, into an internal markup tool. An RNIB employee reviews the conversion to ensure accuracy then sends the content to its publishing and braille embossing facilities. The document or audio CD is then mailed to the end customer.

Azure AI Document Intelligence extracts information from PDFs and hard copies that RNIB staff scan and upload into the Mailings solution. It interprets not only text, but also complex tables and charts used in bank statements and credit card applications. While the AI-powered tool occasionally makes mistakes (like interpreting a table that spans two pages as separate tables), “document intelligence is very good at accurately representing the table and doing a higher resolution pass of very small, very fine print,” Pearson says. “We’ve been able to mitigate a lot of the places where we saw it initially struggle.”

The solution’s accuracy drastically cuts down on manual corrections. “It does the bulk of the upfront work,” Pearson says. “The optical character recognition is fantastic, allowing a person to step in after and refine the output.” Further, nontechnical staff and volunteers will not need complex training to use the solution and can now lead this workstream, since the process no longer requires writing custom code.

The AI-powered Mailings solution has also upgraded the quality of audio recordings RNIB produces. Before, the nonprofit used a robotic-sounding synthetic voice. Now Azure AI Speech converts text to speech, and Azure AI Neural Voice generates a natural, conversational audio recording. The enhanced audio will meet the public’s expectation of high-quality synthetic voices and maintain RNIB’s reputation as a technologically current organization.

RNIB has done proof-of-concept work on incorporating its translation workstream into the Mailings solution. “It’s just an API away,” Pearson says. That step will further consolidate the disparate processes and increase organizations’ ability to provide documentation in Welsh as well as English.

Further, RNIB remains confident in the Azure AI-built tool’s security, privacy, and compliance. The nonprofit handles sensitive data, from debit card PINs to explanations of medical diagnoses, none of which is retained in the Mailings solution. “Basically, data goes in, gets processed, then vanishes into thin air,” Pearson says. “It’s been great to see just how much effort Microsoft has put in to ensure the compliance, security, and safety of everything in Azure.”

 

 

Newer technologies like AI are making us more scalable so we can fill a gap across the UK.

Clint Pearson, Senior Developer, RNIB

Scaling up conversion to accessible formats

Many organizations face challenges adhering to the UK’s legislative imperative to provide all documentation in accessible formats. Meanwhile, around 2 million people in the UK are living with sight loss, a figure that will increase year after year. "There’s a whole heap of people we could be adding value to, and we have big ambitions to scale up,” Forman says. “Since this software solution will be able to convert content quicker and more efficiently, we will be able to take on more work and make more revenue for our mission.”

RNIB anticipates that the AI-based Mailings will drastically reduce the time it takes to convert a document. Initial runs have cut conversion time from up to two weeks to as few as three hours now, RNIB estimates. The speed enables the nonprofit to increase the volume of the documents it converts, and end customers get vital information—such as instructions on how to use government-provided food benefits—faster. In addition, "it clears up the stress and headaches of meeting turnaround requirements” for time-sensitive documents, Pearson says.

Since Mailings can run around the clock, RNIB anticipates adding quality control, printing, and mailing shifts and positions. It should also free up staff time, enabling them to focus on work that requires a human touch, such as providing advice on getting the right assistive technology. “AI provides myriad opportunities to streamline the way our staff members work on a day-to-day basis,” Forman says.

RNIB anticipates that AI will help them expand their offerings, too. They hope to use Azure AI Neural Voice to generate more audiobooks, which the nonprofit sends to people for free. They also hope to use Microsoft 365 Copilot to recap lengthy, complex documents into easy-to-understand summaries. This would make it easier for blind or partially sighted people to quickly glean must-know information that a sighted person could gain by skimming a document. “There’s a wide range of intersectionalities at play here,” Pearson says, and this type of summarization function could help people who also have other disabilities, such as ADHD or dyslexia.

“We’re trying to push the boundaries of the art of what’s possible,” Forman says. “It’s been a continual process of experiment, refine, and demonstrate what we can do with Azure AI to help make society more accessible for all.”

Discover more about RNIB on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X/Twitter, and YouTube.

It’s been great to see just how much effort Microsoft has put in to ensure the compliance, security, and safety of everything in Azure.

Clint Pearson, Senior Developer, RNIB

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Since this software solution will be able to convert content quicker and more efficiently, we will be able to take on more work and make more revenue for our mission.

Aidan Forman, Director of Technology and Digital Transformation, RNIB

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