On May 18 we celebrate Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD), an annual event that highlights the importance of digital access and inclusion. In honor of GAAD, Avanade Accessibility and Inclusive Design Practice team member Daniel Abrahms worked with colleagues Johnny Pang-Chung and Brandon Mar to reflect on the intersecting futures of accessibility and generative AI – and how technology that promotes accessibility helps us all. 

Technology spearheads many of humanity’s breakthroughs and platforms revolutionary ideas, and we often think of it as a universal experience. In many ways, it is universal. Almost anyone, no matter their location or background or knowledge level, can access a wealth of information and tools available online, leveling the playing field like never before.

However, just because information is abundant doesn’t mean it’s equally available to everyone. Different people are bound to interact with technology in different ways – and when technology isn’t developed with inclusivity in mind, people will inevitably be left out.

Currently, interest to understand and solve digital accessibility issues usually comes at the last minute, when legal or market pressures force content creators and their organizations to make large and hasty efforts to solve them as quickly as possible. The responsibility of solving these issues often rests with the designers and authors of the content, who are rarely informed on accessibility concerns.

Fortunately, there is a growing interest in digital accessibility. Large organizations like Microsoft are developing tools to delegate the responsibility from content creators to technology providers. What’s more, the evolution of technologies like generative AI offers new opportunities for making information more accessible for everyone.

"There's an enormous opportunity for AI-powered tools to help alleviate debt, build AI aptitude, and empower employees." - Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO of Microsoft

How can generative AI help with digital accessibility?

Advancements in AI are becoming more readily available for a wide range of people, and almost everyone is dreaming of ways to harness them. Services like ChatGPT can generate answers to nearly any question we can think up, and the responses can take more and more forms daily. Even though generative AI presents certain risks (like the potential to spread misinformation) and will require careful oversight, it shows a great deal of potential for making technology more accessible and inclusive.

Before we discuss how AI can help digital accessibility, let’s look at the solutions that exist already. There are many widely used assistive technologies – like screen readers, image-recognition software and voice-to-text input – that allow users to interact with digital content in a way they’re most capable and comfortable with. Some of these are even built into popular software like web browsers and office applications. These are powerful technologies that help make our digital content more accessible to everyone.

However, most of these assistive technologies can only function when the content and its platform are built properly. This involves ensuring the content has the correct structure and tags, the colors are sufficiently contrasted, and any images, videos and graphs have alternative text/captions, and other accessibility considerations. Unfortunately, many content creators aren’t aware of these requirements in the first place, so the issues are often overlooked. When that happens, a wide range of people cannot access the content right in front of them.

This is a problem that AI can help solve. There are many steps involved to create and host content on digital platforms, and there are many different technologies used to assist in that process. If these technologies were empowered by AI to quickly catch accessibility issues and provide solutions to them, the content creators would have much less of the burden. This could be implemented at every step, from discovery, design, development, testing, etc. We can use AI to reduce and distribute the responsibilities, ensuring our resources are as inclusive as possible.

If we think about digital interaction as well as content, there are also many accessibility concerns. As web applications get more customized and complicated, even long-term technology professionals struggle to perform specific tasks without looking up how. On a more day-to-day level, if you need to pay a bill or cancel a subscription, the option to do that might be buried in menus or hidden at the bottom of the page. This limits accessibility for the average user, especially those who normally struggle with navigating technology. Generative AI is already more than capable of helping us find the exact steps we need for tasks like this and a vast range of others. If this were integrated into various technologies, even a web browser, I could foresee many navigational challenges solved.

The potential solutions AI can offer are limitless, and soon, nearly every aspect of our day-to-day lives will be touched by them. At Avanade, we believe everyone counts, and accessibility is a key cornerstone of our digital ethics framework. As AI continues to skyrocket our solutions, there is more need than ever to ensure no one is left behind.