[gentle piano music]
Caggioni: Giovanni is my little brother.
And I think is the brother that completes our family.
Giovanni was born with congenital cataracts
and affected by Down syndrome.
At the age of one,
he had another syndrome called West syndrome.
Now he is not able to speak, and he is legally blind.
Disability is a factor,
but it's not the thing that defines Giovanni.
man singing: Yippie ya ya yoopie yoopie ya.
Caggioni: Music is really important for our family.
[piano trill]
We use music to spend time together with Giovanni.
woman: [speaking Italian]
Caggioni: He loves it.
Because you can feel the music.
Sometimes he moves on the swing following the music.
[upbeat music]
Giovanni was not able to start the music he liked
on the devices his friends and our family are using.
We tried to address this issue.
I shared this idea with my colleagues at Google.
We started Project Diva.
The idea of Diva is to increase autonomy of people with disabilities
to interact with Google Assistant in a nonverbal way.
One of my colleagues said, "Maybe we can use a physical object."
Giovanni really relies on the sense of touch.
When you have that physical object that he's able to feel,
this is really important for Giovanni.
We started with a button,
because Giovanni is good at pressing buttons.
So you can connect the button and send the input from the button
to the Google Assistant.
female electronic voice: The button is set to play music
from YouTube Music.
[light music]
Caggioni: It was really impressive the first time he pressed the button
to start music by himself.
It was amazing for us.
woman: Ciao.
children: Ciao.
[indistinct chatter]
[upbeat music]
Caggioni: Now Giovanni is able to express himself
with choosing the music he loves.
It may help us just to focus on what we are.
Just brothers.
[gentle piano music]