Artificial intelligence (AI) is powering a wide variety of accessibility tools and features for Americans to address an array of disabilities. For those of us with hearing impairment, voice recognition programs transcribe speeches and lectures in real-time. Meanwhile, facial and object recognition software helps translate a user’s surroundings so that people with vision impairment can understand their surroundings in detail. And for the six to eight million Americans with some form of language impairment, software programs matching avatars with written text, pictures, and video help learners make connections between speech and language.
I recently participated in an interesting panel about AI and wearables during the annual M-Enabling Summit, a really wonderful conference focused on digital accessibility and inclusion. The conversation with my co-panelists and the audience was thought-provoking. We found ourselves reflecting on AI-driven accessibility features and how they are accessed today – and how ongoing and proposed government interventions into emerging technology markets is disrupting this access.
Just as small businesses and startups strive to build privacy and security into their offerings from the ground up, they also have a strong incentive to ensure people with all abilities can use them effectively. For example, the developer of an app that helps caregivers remotely screen and monitor patients with neurological disorders needs to ensure that those with cognitive disabilities can effectively use it. Similarly, an augmented reality app designed to tour homes could include voice descriptions of what appears on the screen for users with vision impairments.
Historically, accessibility features existed as add-ons for consumers to seek on their own and too often did not present themselves as practical options for integration into the app everyone downloads. Requiring people with disabilities to lean on others to integrate these features for them as aftermarket tools is a costly method of providing accessibility and is not ideal for app companies that want their offerings to be accessible out of the box.
This is where software marketplaces have improved the landscape for developers and consumers with disabilities. Platform-level features currently allow consumers to activate key accessibility features, such as verbal commands, ubiquitously across their device experience. Platforms facilitate this by providing developers with open access to a wide range of application programming interfaces (APIs).
During my M-Enabling Summit panel, we discussed this evolution and how existing government interventions that are underway—namely, the European Union’s Digital Markets Act—make it more difficult for platforms to offer these accessibility tools feasibly, effectively, and affordably for developers and consumers. And we know that such a result is not hypothetical – see, for example, the decision made by larger companies not to roll out new AI features (which have immense benefit to those with a wide range of disabilities) in the European Union due to compliance burdens associated with the AI Act.
So, while digital platform interventions by governments have not focused on support for and access to accessibility features, they should. Reducing or eliminating their availability and ubiquity would turn back the clock for smart device owners with disabilities and force them to once again rely primarily on aftermarket options, a huge step backwards.
Reflecting on the discussion at the M-Enabling Summit, I think it is vital that the pro-consumer attributes of the platforms that small technology developers and consumers with disabilities rely on be brought to the fore. It is more important than ever that we avoid disrupting access to the most basic consumer protection features consumers and developers rely on in the app economy, with accessibility being given the same priority as privacy, security, and the protection of intellectual property.
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