Smart tech is capable of enhancing lives and connecting people. That can mean anything from bringing communities together to ensuring personal safety. This Pride Month we’re celebrating by showcasing exciting tech innovations that are improving the lives of those in the LGBTQIA+ community.
Tech That Amplifies
Representation matters. As does amplification. For Pride Month, Apple Music collaborated with Gay Times to highlight queer voices through a selection of curated playlists. The playlists feature everything from legendary icon Elton John to a Christmas lineup to love letters for Pride. This partnership is bringing a musical focus on LGBTQIA+ perspectives and experiences to a vast audience through Apple Music’s streaming platform.
Clothing company H&M has taken a different tech-enabled approach to delivering LGBTQIA+ voices to a wider audience. They developed an image scanner that, when used to scan rainbow-adorned items, opens a webpage that showcases the first-person stories of LGBTQIA+ leaders. The interface also encourages users to share their own stories.
Tech That Protects
We’ve all used Google Maps or Waze to find our way. While these apps can help people get from point A to point B, and even show what point B looks like from the street or from a satellite, they don’t tell us what it’s like to actually be in a place. Especially when it comes to places, cities, or countries that are unknown, it’s important to understand the safety concerns that might arise. GeoSure is an app that allows users to gauge their personal level of safety in over 65,000 places worldwide, in real time.
With an easy-to-understand 1-100 scale and 8 categories of safety, GeoSure enables users to determine their risk level at any time with just a glance. By using AI and trusted data sources, GeoSource can provide accurate information; with safety categories such as LGBTQIA+ safety and basic freedoms, individuals can confidently assess a particular place’s risk level. Apps like GeoSure are empowering LGBTQIA+ folx to travel safely.
Tech That Trains
The Trevor Project is the world’s largest suicide prevention and crisis intervention center for LGBTQIA+ youth and their highly trained crisis counselors answer calls, chats, and texts 24/7. With a goal of serving 1.8 million crisis contacts annually by 2024, the nonprofit aimed at tripling its number of counselors last year with an eventual increase of 10 times. Onboarding and training that number of volunteers is overwhelming, however, and The Trevor Project turned to AI to help.
The first-of-its-kind crisis contact simulator, a chatbot called “Riley,” generates messages that emulate those that counselors would normally receive, allowing trainees to gain valuable insight and experience. “Riley” has a distinct persona, an anxious and depressed teen from North Carolina, but a variety of situations and contexts are being developed. The Trevor Project has about 700 digital crisis counselors and trains new groups each month; the addition of “Riley” to their training toolbox allows them to continue helping America’s LGBTQIA+ youth during their most difficult times.
Developments in tech certainly make our homes smarter and easier to live in, but we’re also seeing heartening inroads into utilizing tech to increase accessibility, visibility, and equity for the LGBTQIA+ community.
Responsive Living, the term coined by Acoustic Architects founders, Aaron Flint and Spencer Hauldren, is the concept of seamlessly enhancing the client’s unique lifestyle using smart home technology. Responsive Living allows you to interact with your space via touch input, voice command, and predictive automation, placing you in full control of your home.
If you would like to learn more about integrating new systems into your smart home system, feel free to connect with us. We will be happy to schedule a demo with you.
For more information, visit acousticarchitects.net.
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