Confusing, Hopeful, and Necessary: Our AI Accessibility Journey

The most valuable accessibility conversations are happening in unexpected places. In this reflection on recent events, the AccessJet team shares how conferences focused on broader topics yielded surprising insights about disability inclusion, corporate transparency, and AI's potential.At Fair Cultures Barcelona, discussions about corporate transparency revealed why accessibility progress remains challenging despite public commitments. Organizations often present themselves as champions of inclusion while simultaneously supporting trade organizations with conflicting priorities. This disconnect helps explain why even with C-suite buy-in, meaningful accessibility implementation remains difficult as different departments operate with competing objectives.Meanwhile, the Siemens AI Summit showcased how AI can revolutionize personalization in prosthetics, creating solutions tailored to individual needs rather than one-size-fits-all approaches. The beauty of these conversations? They happened at an AI conference rather than an accessibility event, exposing new audiences to disability-centered thinking.We explore the concept of "peer normativity" – ensuring disabled users have experiences equal in quality to non-disabled peers, even if those experiences differ. This shift from identical experiences to equivalent quality acknowledges the complexity of meeting diverse needs.While celebrating AI's potential to transform accessibility, we also grapple with serious questions about data privacy and corporate responsibility. As we increasingly rely on AI assistants that require access to deeply personal information, can we trust the organizations behind these tools? And as these technologies increasingly provide pre-packaged answers, how do we ensure future generations develop the critical thinking skills to question what they're being presented?Join us for this thought-provoking discussion about finding accessibility insights in unexpected places, the promise and perils of AI, and the importance of critical thinking in our increasingly algorithmic world.Send us Fan MailSupport the showFollow axschat on social media.Bluesky:Antonio https://bsky.app/profile/akwyz.comDebra https://bsky.app/profile/debraruh.bsky.socialNeil https://bsky.app/profile/neilmilliken.bsky.socialaxschat https://bsky.app/profile/axschat.bsky.socialLinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/antoniovieirasantos/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/axschat/https://www.linkedin.com/in/neilmilliken/Vimeohttps://vimeo.com/akwyzhttps://twitter.com/axschathttps://twitter.com/AkwyZhttps://twitter.com/neilmillikenhttps://twitter.com/debraruh