BEIJING, May 17 (Xinhua) -- A young researcher sitting in a wheelchair looked out at the audience in a Beijing conference hall and described a future in which blind people can move through crowded streets with devices capable of sensing danger before it arrives.
"A guide device should do more than detect obstacles," he said. "It should work almost like a second pair of eyes."
Around the room, heads nodded in recognition. Many people there understood the challenge intimately because they were living it themselves.
Ahead of China's national day of assisting persons with disabilities, which is observed on the third Sunday of May, the country held a forum for disabled doctoral students and scholars. Researchers working in fields ranging from artificial intelligence to psychology and human-computer interaction gathered to discuss technology, accessibility and inclusion.
But this was far from a typical academic conference.
Many of the participants were not studying disability from a distance. They were researching problems they encounter in their own daily lives.
For years, disabled people were often treated mainly as end users of technology, rather than as the people helping design them.
Now, that is beginning to change.
Between 2021 and 2025, nearly 140,000 disabled students entered colleges and universities nationwide, with close to 1,000 pursuing doctoral degrees. Increasingly, disabled young people are entering classrooms, research institutes and technology companies, helping shape the questions being asked in the first place.
Among them was Lin Jiaqin, a doctoral researcher at East China Normal University, who demonstrated wearable technology that translates sign language into speech in real time and converts spoken language into subtitles or sign language displays.
Existing tools can help deaf and hearing people communicate, he said, but many interactions still feel slow and emotionally distant.
"We're not only translating language," Lin said. "We're helping express ideas, talents and emotions that often struggle to be heard."
One of the forum's most memorable remarks came from Wang Sujing, a researcher with cerebral palsy at the Chinese Academy of Sciences who types slowly with one hand.
"When people research themselves," he said, "the results can be extraordinary."
Wang's team studies how people with cerebral palsy use eye movements and finger motion to interact with computers, work that has earned international recognition in the field of human-computer interaction.
Another doctoral student, Yang Yong, has focused his research on depression among visually impaired college students.
"Many visually impaired people can't fully describe what they're feeling," he said. "They simply endure it."
Because he has lived through similar experiences himself, Yang believes he can better identify problems that are often overlooked.
As the forum drew to a close, Kang Xinchen, a doctoral student, encouraged more disabled people to bring their own experiences into the development of new technologies.
"Every real challenge people face can help make technology more humane," Kang said. ■
