AI for Disability Advocacy
TEAM

Canada: Christo El Morr (PI), Rachel Gorman Co-PI), Serban Dinca-Panaitescu, Thumeka Mgwigwi, Alexis Buettgen, Enakshi Dua
France: Pierre Maret , Fabrice Muhlenbach
Research Assitants: Bushra Kundi (RA), Alexandra Ceeighton (RA),
Trainees: Kushagra Bisen Singh, Dhayananth Dharmalingam, Rediet Tadesse
Project Description
The lack of availability of disability data has been identified as a major challenge hindering continuous disability equity monitoring. It is important to develop a platform that enables searching for disability data to expose systemic discrimination and social exclusion, which increase vulnerability to inequitable social conditions.
Objectives
Our project aims to create an accessible and multilingual pilot disability website that structures and integrates data about people with disabilities and provides data for national and international disability advocacy communities. The platform will be endowed with a document upload function with hybrid (automated and manual) paragraph tagging, while the querying function will involve an intelligent natural language search in the supported languages.
Methods
We have designed and implemented a virtual community platform using Wikibase, Semantic Web, machine learning, and web programming tools to enable disability communities to upload and search for disability documents. The platform data model is based on an ontology we have designed following the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). The virtual community facilitates the uploading and sharing of validated information, and supports disability rights advocacy by enabling dissemination of knowledge.
Publications
Articles
El Morr, C., Maret, P., Muhlenbach, F., Dharmalingam, D., Tadesse, R., Creighton, A., Kundi, B., Buettgen, A., Mgwigwi, T., Dinca-Panaitescu, S., Dua, E., & Gorman, R. (2021). A Virtual Community for Disability Advocacy: Development of a Searchable Artificial Intelligence–Supported Platform. JMIR Form Res, 5(11), e33335. https://doi.org/10.2196/33335
Chapters
Kundi, B., El Morr, C., Gorman , R., & Dua, E. (2023). Artificial Intelligence and Bias: A Scoping Review. In C. El Morr (Ed.), AI and Society: Tensions and Opportunities (pp. 199-213). CRC Press Taylor & Francis. https://doi.org/10.1201/9781003261247-15
Conferences
Creighton, A., Dada, S., Gorman, R., Kundi, B., Mgwigwi, T., Maret, P., Muhlenbach, F., Dinca-Panaitescu, S., & Morr, C. E. (2023). Reimagining Disability Data Using Artificial Intelligence: A Transnational Disability Rights Approach The Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences Congress 2023, Toronto, Ontario.
Singh Bisen, K., Alemayehu, S. A., Maret, P., Creighton, A., Gorman, R., Kundi, B., Mgwgwi, T., Muhlenbach, F., Dinca-Panaitescu, S., & El Morr, C. (2023). Evaluation of Search Methods on Community Documents. In E. Garoufallou & A. Vlachidis, Communications in Computer and Information Science Metadata and Semantic Research, MTSR 2022, London, UK.
Singh Bisen, K., Alemayehu, S., Assefa, Maret, P., Creighton, A., Gorman, R., Kundi, B., Mgwgwi, T., Muhlenbach, F., Dinca-Panaitescu, S., Diefenbach, D., Guo, K., & El Morr, C. (2022, Sep. 13-15, 2022). Wikibase as an Infrastructure for Community Documents: The example of the Disability Wiki Platform Semantics 2022 - 18th International Conference on Semantics Systems, Vienna, Austria. https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3235/paper14.pdf
El Morr, C., Muhlenbach, F., & Gorman, R. (2022). AI for Health - the Equity Question the 20th International Conference of Informatics, Management and Technology in Healthcare (ICIMTH 2022), July 1-3, 2022, Athens, Greece.
Gorman, R., Mgwigwi, T., Creighton, A., Stanley, A., Maret, P., Muhlenbach, F., Kundi, B., Dinca-Panaitescu, S., & El Morr, C. (2022). Data for Disability Advocacy: Navigating data bias with a wikibase AI prototype 11th Annual Accessibility Conference IDEA11 – Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility, University of Guelph, ON.
Creighton, A., Gorman, R., Mgwigwi, T., Stanley, A., Maret, P., Muhlenbach, F., Kundi, B., Dinca-Panaitescu, S., & El Morr, C. (2022). Promoting the Human Rights Model of Disability - Disability Wikibase: Challenging AI Bias through Data Democratization 13th International Disability Law Summer School, 20-24 June, Galway, Ireland, Galway, Ireland. https://cdlp.clr.events/event/132113:13th-international-disability-law-summer-school
Dharmalingam, D., Tadesse, R., Kundi, B., Creighton, A., Maret, P., Muhlenbach, F., Gorman, R., Dinca-Panaitescu, S., Buettgen, A., Dua, E., Mgwigwi, T., & El Morr, C. (2022). Using AI Techniques and Smart Communities for Disability Advocacy 24th IUHPE World Conference on Health Promotion (IUHPE 2022), Online.
Alemayehu, S. A., Bisen, K. S., Maret, P., Creighton, A., Gorman, R., Kundi, B., Mgwgwi, T., Muhlenbach, F., Dinca-Panaitescu, S., & Morr, C. E. (2022). Methodology for Creating a Community Corpus Using a Wikibase Knowledge Graph.Communications in Computer and Information Science (CCIS) 4th Iberoamerican Conference and third Indo-American Conference, KGSWC 2022 (KGSWC 2022), November 21–23, 2022, Madrid, Spain.
Kundi, B., Dharmalingam, D., Tadesse, R., Creighton, A., Gorman, R., Maret, P., Muhlenbach, F., Buettgen, A., Dua, E., Mgwigwi, T., Dinca-Panaitescu, S., & Morr, C. E. (2022, May 27 - 28, 2022). The Disability Wiki Project: A Virtual Community for Disability Advocacy using Artificial Intelligence The Conference for Undergraduate Health Research (CUHR), May 27 - 28, 2022, Toronto, Toronto Canada.
Kundi, B., Dharmalingam, D., Tadesse, R., Creighton, A., Gorman, R., Maret, P., Muhlenbach, F., Buettgen, A., Dua, E., Mgwigwi, T., Dinca-Panaitescu, M., & El Morr, C. (2022). Disability Advocacy using a Smart Virtual Community. Proceedings of the 15th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC 2022 - HEALTHINF) 22-24 February 2022, Lisbon, Portugal.
Gorman, R., Maret, P., Creighton, A., Kundi, B., Muhlenbach, F., Buettgen, A., Dua, E., Reaume, G., Mgwigwi, T., Dinca-Panaitescu, S., & El Morr, C. (2021). The Potential of an Artificial Intelligence for Disability Advocacy: The WikiDisability Project. Stud Health Technol Inform, 281, 1025-1026. https://doi.org/10.3233/shti210338
France: Pierre Maret , Fabrice Muhlenbach
Research Assitants: Bushra Kundi (RA), Alexandra Ceeighton (RA),
Trainees: Kushagra Bisen Singh, Dhayananth Dharmalingam, Rediet Tadesse
Project Description
The lack of availability of disability data has been identified as a major challenge hindering continuous disability equity monitoring. It is important to develop a platform that enables searching for disability data to expose systemic discrimination and social exclusion, which increase vulnerability to inequitable social conditions.
Objectives
Our project aims to create an accessible and multilingual pilot disability website that structures and integrates data about people with disabilities and provides data for national and international disability advocacy communities. The platform will be endowed with a document upload function with hybrid (automated and manual) paragraph tagging, while the querying function will involve an intelligent natural language search in the supported languages.
Methods
We have designed and implemented a virtual community platform using Wikibase, Semantic Web, machine learning, and web programming tools to enable disability communities to upload and search for disability documents. The platform data model is based on an ontology we have designed following the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). The virtual community facilitates the uploading and sharing of validated information, and supports disability rights advocacy by enabling dissemination of knowledge.
Publications
Articles
El Morr, C., Maret, P., Muhlenbach, F., Dharmalingam, D., Tadesse, R., Creighton, A., Kundi, B., Buettgen, A., Mgwigwi, T., Dinca-Panaitescu, S., Dua, E., & Gorman, R. (2021). A Virtual Community for Disability Advocacy: Development of a Searchable Artificial Intelligence–Supported Platform. JMIR Form Res, 5(11), e33335. https://doi.org/10.2196/33335
Chapters
Kundi, B., El Morr, C., Gorman , R., & Dua, E. (2023). Artificial Intelligence and Bias: A Scoping Review. In C. El Morr (Ed.), AI and Society: Tensions and Opportunities (pp. 199-213). CRC Press Taylor & Francis. https://doi.org/10.1201/9781003261247-15
Conferences
Creighton, A., Dada, S., Gorman, R., Kundi, B., Mgwigwi, T., Maret, P., Muhlenbach, F., Dinca-Panaitescu, S., & Morr, C. E. (2023). Reimagining Disability Data Using Artificial Intelligence: A Transnational Disability Rights Approach The Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences Congress 2023, Toronto, Ontario.
Singh Bisen, K., Alemayehu, S. A., Maret, P., Creighton, A., Gorman, R., Kundi, B., Mgwgwi, T., Muhlenbach, F., Dinca-Panaitescu, S., & El Morr, C. (2023). Evaluation of Search Methods on Community Documents. In E. Garoufallou & A. Vlachidis, Communications in Computer and Information Science Metadata and Semantic Research, MTSR 2022, London, UK.
Singh Bisen, K., Alemayehu, S., Assefa, Maret, P., Creighton, A., Gorman, R., Kundi, B., Mgwgwi, T., Muhlenbach, F., Dinca-Panaitescu, S., Diefenbach, D., Guo, K., & El Morr, C. (2022, Sep. 13-15, 2022). Wikibase as an Infrastructure for Community Documents: The example of the Disability Wiki Platform Semantics 2022 - 18th International Conference on Semantics Systems, Vienna, Austria. https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3235/paper14.pdf
El Morr, C., Muhlenbach, F., & Gorman, R. (2022). AI for Health - the Equity Question the 20th International Conference of Informatics, Management and Technology in Healthcare (ICIMTH 2022), July 1-3, 2022, Athens, Greece.
Gorman, R., Mgwigwi, T., Creighton, A., Stanley, A., Maret, P., Muhlenbach, F., Kundi, B., Dinca-Panaitescu, S., & El Morr, C. (2022). Data for Disability Advocacy: Navigating data bias with a wikibase AI prototype 11th Annual Accessibility Conference IDEA11 – Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility, University of Guelph, ON.
Creighton, A., Gorman, R., Mgwigwi, T., Stanley, A., Maret, P., Muhlenbach, F., Kundi, B., Dinca-Panaitescu, S., & El Morr, C. (2022). Promoting the Human Rights Model of Disability - Disability Wikibase: Challenging AI Bias through Data Democratization 13th International Disability Law Summer School, 20-24 June, Galway, Ireland, Galway, Ireland. https://cdlp.clr.events/event/132113:13th-international-disability-law-summer-school
Dharmalingam, D., Tadesse, R., Kundi, B., Creighton, A., Maret, P., Muhlenbach, F., Gorman, R., Dinca-Panaitescu, S., Buettgen, A., Dua, E., Mgwigwi, T., & El Morr, C. (2022). Using AI Techniques and Smart Communities for Disability Advocacy 24th IUHPE World Conference on Health Promotion (IUHPE 2022), Online.
Alemayehu, S. A., Bisen, K. S., Maret, P., Creighton, A., Gorman, R., Kundi, B., Mgwgwi, T., Muhlenbach, F., Dinca-Panaitescu, S., & Morr, C. E. (2022). Methodology for Creating a Community Corpus Using a Wikibase Knowledge Graph.Communications in Computer and Information Science (CCIS) 4th Iberoamerican Conference and third Indo-American Conference, KGSWC 2022 (KGSWC 2022), November 21–23, 2022, Madrid, Spain.
Kundi, B., Dharmalingam, D., Tadesse, R., Creighton, A., Gorman, R., Maret, P., Muhlenbach, F., Buettgen, A., Dua, E., Mgwigwi, T., Dinca-Panaitescu, S., & Morr, C. E. (2022, May 27 - 28, 2022). The Disability Wiki Project: A Virtual Community for Disability Advocacy using Artificial Intelligence The Conference for Undergraduate Health Research (CUHR), May 27 - 28, 2022, Toronto, Toronto Canada.
Kundi, B., Dharmalingam, D., Tadesse, R., Creighton, A., Gorman, R., Maret, P., Muhlenbach, F., Buettgen, A., Dua, E., Mgwigwi, T., Dinca-Panaitescu, M., & El Morr, C. (2022). Disability Advocacy using a Smart Virtual Community. Proceedings of the 15th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC 2022 - HEALTHINF) 22-24 February 2022, Lisbon, Portugal.
Gorman, R., Maret, P., Creighton, A., Kundi, B., Muhlenbach, F., Buettgen, A., Dua, E., Reaume, G., Mgwigwi, T., Dinca-Panaitescu, S., & El Morr, C. (2021). The Potential of an Artificial Intelligence for Disability Advocacy: The WikiDisability Project. Stud Health Technol Inform, 281, 1025-1026. https://doi.org/10.3233/shti210338