> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://nexta11y.gitbook.io/nexta11y-docs/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://nexta11y.gitbook.io/nexta11y-docs/getting-started/transcripts.md).
# Transcripts
This page contains transcripts of all talks presented during the bootcamp. Click to expand.
Iris Fu
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Hello, everyone! My name is Iris. I am a current artist based in Los Angeles.
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And I'm going to take you through my perspective on accessible design.
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First, I'm going to start with some pieces of my own to… giving you an idea of my perspective. Um…
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These two are… they're two pieces of mine, art pieces. Uh, the one on the left is titled, I Love You, in parentheses.
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It is a bowl of fruit left to rot on my desk for 2 days.
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As I took sequential photographs of it. And the image on the right is a still from a installation sculpture, and performance piece that I did titled.
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Assure for cubes, Earth, and my grandparents. It is an 8x8.
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Block of ice with fake blood frozen inside of it. So, as you can see, the reason I show this to you is because my…
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Artistic practice is pretty experimental. And I find that…
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This experimental perspective very much informs. How I approach accessibility and accessible design.
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Okay. To start… This is…
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A phrase, an ideology that you might see very prominently in a lot of design spaces.
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That design is equal to systems. This is the first thing that my typography teacher said to me when I entered class.
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Design is equal to systems, while art… is not equal to systems.
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Art is free-flowing. It is… very abstract. It is…
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Devoid of any constraint. While design, you have to create your own system.
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And follow it to that. The reason I bring this up…
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Is because I think the separation of design and art and systems.
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Is a huge flaw in our understanding of accessibility. And I'll further explain why.
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But throughout this presentation, I want to talk to you a little bit about how you can bring artistic practice.
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Um, artistic… pursuits into accessible design.
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And only further enhance. It's accessibility.
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So to start, I want to talk a little bit about.
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Some more common understandings of accessibility. Um, this is from the U.S. Government.
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It is a guideline on how to create universal design. The first thing you see is design with everyone in mind.
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Some other things you might see, um… very valid. Having… ramps for wheelchair access on a park, as you see on the top right.
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Um, left-hand scissors on the bottom right. Um, you'll see…
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Easier to open doors… Uh, all sorts of things. And these are all very important, but…
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Something that I want to do during this presentation is… broaden and complicate what accessibility could mean.
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This is also really interesting. This is a poster. Designing for users on the autistic.
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Spectrum. It lists a couple do's and don'ts. 2. Use simple colors. Don't use bright contrasting colors.
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Do write in plain English, don't use figures of speech and idioms. Do use simple sentences and bullets.
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Don't create a wall of text.
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As you can see. This may help people on the autistic spectrum.
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But there also is… a flip side to it.
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Often times, accessible designs, accessible language. Has a certain tone to it, and it adopts a very patronizing.
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Perspective. Um, that you have to simplify. A design to make it more accessible.
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You have to get rid of all the unimportant parts. You have to… cut away the fat.
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For many people, this is the opposite of what art does.
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Art is very loud. It has a lot of figurative language. It is not so easy to understand, as you may see in my pieces. It requires a lot of thinking. It requires… a lot of analysis.
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All of things. That everyone should be able to do. And everyone should have access.
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To understanding. This is an artist.
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That I believe has… creates a much better guideline for accessibility than most of these websites do.
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This is Christine's son, Kim. Uh, she is a pretty prominent artist. Um, she…
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Got super famous making work about her experience. As someone who is deaf.
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Um, both going around daily actions in life, and also entering the art world. Um, which, as you may know, very exclusionary.
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And is built off a specific system to benefit specific people.
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Um… The poster on the left.
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Degrees of deaf rage in everyday situations. Um, while it has…
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Somewhat of a clearer message. There is an element to it.
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That is also very unclear. She describes her rage.
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In angles. Acute rage. Left rage.
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Obtuse rage. Left… or reflex rate. Full-on rage.
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Having something that is illustrative like this, and not… clear to the point might not be universal.
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Some people might look at this. And think, I don't understand what's going on at all.
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But that's because effective, accessible design is not meant to be universal.
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Effective, accessible design excludes. Certain people. It creates…
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Artists and designers create a system. That is for the person, the group, the community that they have in mind.
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And this… creation of a code.
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It's actually a really great way. To approach accessibility.
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It narrows your focus. It allows you. To really hone in.
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On who you want to speak to, why you're speaking to them about this.
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And therefore, the solution to make it most accessible. To that group.
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You can approach that group. From someone who has been historically excluded. She approached this perspective from somebody, um, who is.
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Deaf, somebody who… It's not very included in the art world.
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This… this… technique of exclusion.
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Can have a very positive effect.
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So, these are pieces from Michelene Thomas. Another American creator, she…
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Um, is well known for her collages on the left of.
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Various, um… well-known or influential African American female figures, women figures.
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Um, that she would, uh, collage and honor with sequins, with colorful patterns.
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But as you can see on the right, she also has a photographic process.
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And this goes back to what I was talking about systems.
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Although, um, she doesn't have any words. In her creations, um, and…
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Both pieces come from… one comes from photographs, one comes from collage. There is a very clear through line.
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Um, through her practice. And when you look at a piece in a museum.
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And you see this, you can immediately tell that is Michelene's Thomas piece.
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This is what I mean by creating a visual, accessible system.
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That doesn't… try to simplify.
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It doesn't try to make minimalistic. Accessible design can look like this. It can look colorful. It can look confusing. Um, it can require a little bit more…
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Complex thought.
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And so, I believe this is my last slide, but… or second to last.
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I just wanted to list out. A bunch of different things.
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That you can… use to try to make more accessible.
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Or use as a lens. For accessibility.
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Language, for example. My parents are immigrants. Um, I come from Chinese-American family. My parents grew up in China.
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And my grandparents, who currently live in the US. Can't speak pretty much any English. I have to speak to them in very broken Chinese.
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But… when we think about accessibility. It's not just ramps. We can think about.
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How can we include multiple languages as options in… a piece of text. Um, how can we keep in mind educational access?
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Um, I work a lot in nonprofit education. Um, how can we speak to somebody who has.
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Um, historically, never had a college education, or perhaps dropped out of high school because they had to help their parents.
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Uh, work in a farm. Make enough income to survive.
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These are all different perspectives that you can adopt for accessibility, and this is only to further enhance my points.
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That accessibility. Can be complex. It does not have to simplify, but what it does have to do.
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Is narrow down your scope. It has to…
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Speak to a perspective that makes sense. For that moment. For that project.
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Oftentimes, it comes from a very personal perspective as well. Like, for me, I work a lot in language, in socioeconomic status.
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In age, race. And gender. Those are important things for me.
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All right, last couple slides.
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This is to return to my first point. Design is equal to systems.
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Art, also, is very systematic. And both of these systems can be used.
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Interchangeably. Together to create a new definition of accessibility. The reason I include this is because…
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As you can see. Kind of an ugly design.
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It is definitely not… the most, uh, universally liked.
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It is not the most universally… you might not even call this accessible. I don't think it would pass any sort of accessibility metric.
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But what it does pass is that it is immediately visually identifiable.
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Um, you look at this and you have an emotion. You can feel hatred for it. You can also feel a lot of passion for it.
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Could feel a lot of love for it. At the end of the day, people are really not looking at your words.
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People are looking at this. What kind of feeling are they taking away?
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From your design. So…
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This also will not pass any sort of disability or accessibility metric.
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You can't really read it. One of the basics of accessible design is to.
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Have enough contrast in your words so that you can actually read what's on the screen. But say you made this with texture.
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Um, say this was printed on a t-shirt, and you can actually feel what each of these words are saying.
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And, to the naked eye, it might seem somewhat invisible. Now, that has created a new kind of meaning, and it has a very political resonance as well.
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And it's very clear that's for certain people. So, I just wanted to end with that, um, because although both of these designs I came up in.
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Had less than a minute. Um… they kind of illustrate… that you don't need…
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A whole lot of already creative systems to… understand accessibility. You can make your own system.
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And it doesn't have to follow what's. Most people might say is… be most universally, universally liked.
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All right.
Ilaana Khan
Link to slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1TbuRSk28uYYRkC9NbabGk_OH6gfWeZuIEuGac16271Q/edit?slide=id.g2558abb5fb3_0_0#slide=id.g2558abb5fb3_0_0
Hi, I'm Ilaana and I'm going to be talking about assistive design research. So I'm first going to introduce myself and talk a little bit about why I think assistive design research is so important, especially like nowadays where there's more and more technology and stuff and we're able to like address issues. \
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So I'm an undergraduate at UCLA. I'm studying physics right now. I have some specialization in biochemistry just because I've taken these courses and due to the research I'm involved in. \
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But I've been involved in research since I was around 15 years old.\
My first ever lab was in 10th grade. I joined a physics lab at the University of Central Florida. And I just did this by, you know, looking around and asking around back then. And, you know, with my progression of research and my increasing discovery, I was presented another opportunity at Western Washington University, which was this lab, the NEAT Lab. \
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She was looking for students to join her cause, her cause being that there are children, nonverbal children with autism spectrum disorder, ASD, who are unable to express their emotions. Now it kind of makes sense if you can't talk and if you're not really taught like language and stuff, it's much harder for you to express emotions.\
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For children with ASD, it's harder alone to express emotions, even if you can talk. So the issue is multiplied if you're unable to talk, if you're nonverbal. So we wanted to kind of address this since the world itself was kind of designed for able-bodied people. We wanted to put an emphasis on the emotions because these matter a lot for children with ASD as well. Without properly addressing their emotions when they're a child, it'll become worse and worse as you go. And this is just a significant factor in child development.\
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So our approach was to design an app that can best convey these emotions for children with ASD. It can be used by anyone. This is an important consideration because when we think of emotions and, you know, if you grew up in the US, if you grew up in India, if you grew up in\
China, like everything is kind of different. Maybe different colors mean different things. For example, in Chinese culture, like a white rose\
may be something completely different than in American culture. So considering the different colors of the world, the different emotions and considerations, what symbolizes what in different countries was a very important factor for us. So that kind of leads us into the process and how we developed this project. Our project was to design and develop a prototype app that could be used by children with ASD to express their emotions. And this was geared towards like nonverbal children.\
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Heavy consideration was colors. So we spent like a lot of time, we did extensive literary research on what colors represent what emotions so that we could develop our own color wheel. So we ended up seeing like yellow actually led to a lot of like happy emotions.\
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Meanwhile, when I was first doing research, I thought, oh, a happy color could be like green because I just think like green means go and spring and stuff. But once we did our research, we realized, oh, yellow is actually more applicable to happiness than other things. And I guess that does make sense, too.\
If you see like emojis, they're usually like yellow in color. So it does make sense. And then different facial expressions as well.\
We had to do a lot of extensive studying on that. So we chose like a crying emoji for sadness because that's just like a natural human instinct. Like we do cry when we're sad.\
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Stuff like this. We had to do a lot of research on what symbolizes what. And so my specific role was to like kind of design the app on Figma, which is like a user interface creator. If you've ever used it before, you might use it soon if you're interested in app development. I also read and like I tagged background literature. So I'll like go through papers, go through interviews, and, you know, write down like common recurring themes from those papers on\
atlas.ti. And then I also helped design the poster that we ended up presenting later on once our research was accepted.\
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So we wanted to make this app kind of free. That was a big consideration. We wanted to make the app free for research purposes and also to be released later on because the current top app at the time was Proloquo2Go.\
It was priced at $249.99. And I thought that was kind of really, really high, especially if we want this to be able to be used by people not in the U.S. as well. So we wanted to design a free app, one that also emphasized emotions as well as tangible things because our top app was prioritizing tangible things like I'm hungry, I would like to use the restroom. So we wanted to\
really emphasize emotions and also make it free.\
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Those were our two priorities. I can show you here. This is just a quick like video of like guiding through the app.\
I was not the one who programmed this app. It was one of my lab teammates. But you can kind of see like just clicking around, you can see the different emotions. We can edit, alter the settings. You could lead to different themes like happiness, sadness, and then it'll go to more specific emotions from there. So we wanted to really like help make it a super simple interface as well, just so like kids like, oh, I'm happy. Well, what type of happiness am I looking at? Stuff like this. We were just really trying to be specific about it. \
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So overall, we were able to indeed release our prototype app to subjects in\
Bangladesh who volunteered. And we gave it to parents. You know, they were able to use it with their children. And they did express like content with the app during like interview after we deployed the app, the prototype to them.\
And they also asked us to help with other things, such as like managing their time and medications. And this does make sense considering like parents have to manage so much. Parents of children with ASD have to manage so much like with appointments that it might be hard for them to keep up.\
And this actually led to our next project, which was aCal. And this was just like a little calendar app that was, that had a lot of like preset settings for appointments, medications, and just making a super easy user interface for them to use. Our research ended up getting accepted into the conference we applied to, which was Ubicomp at Georgia Tech.\
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This was an ACM conference, ACM is the Association for Computing Machinery. And the title of our publication was To Aid Emotion Expression for Nonverbal Autistic Individuals. In an app, less features is more.\
And what we mean by that is just like a simpler app is better for the children. And we wanted a simple app that shows like, you know, each color and each association. So that was our overall research outcome.\
And I think that it did help a lot with what I saw in, you know, assistive design and stuff. I saw a bunch of other stuff at that conference as well. That was super helpful. But just focusing on children with ASD was super meaningful to me and making the world more accessible, especially with our emotions, which is overlooked a lot. \
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So thank you all for listening.\
I hope you can take away some lessons from this talk.
Bailey M. Owens
Link to slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1kXw_JggrughktOJVU4ZiUR2aLiR-hL4Oi7w_yw34Ydw/edit?slide=id.g4dfce81f19_0_45#slide=id.g4dfce81f19_0_45
Hi, my name is Bailey Owens and I’m from Virginia, United States. I am now a pre-med student at UCLA, where I’m studying psychology and minoring in neuroscience and creative writing. I am aiming to become a psychiatrist in the future and am also interested in health equity and disability rights. As someone living with a hearing disorder, I am aware of how frustrating it can be when content isn’t designed to be inclusive. When content isn’t accessible, it creates unnecessary barriers that prevent equal access. I care deeply about accessibility because it ensures everyone has the same opportunities in daily life.
Last year, I took a course on disabilities in law and discovered why certain legal frameworks are so important for those with disabilities. The Americans with Disabilities Act, or the ADA, was passed in 1990 and prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities. It requires equal access in work, education, public spaces, and transportation. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, or the WCAG, provides clear, practical standards for making websites, apps, and online content available to people with a wide range of disabilities. It discusses features such as screen reader compatibility, captions, color contrast, and navigation that work for disabled users.
These frameworks are essential because they allow people with disabilities to live their everyday lives with greater ease, both in the physical and digital worlds. For web developers and designers, especially, WCAG is essential because it allows more people to access their site. If a website isn’t accessible, it shuts out entire groups of people. Accessibility online isn’t optional, but an essential part of creating content.
For people with hearing disorders, the WCAG includes specific provisions such as captions and transcripts, sign language interpretation, and background audio controls. These measures ensure that people who can’t fully hear audio can still access and understand online information. Beyond compliance, these provisions may help not only disabled users but also broader audiences, such as people unfamiliar with the language and those in noisy environments.
People often believe that WCAG can be used as a checklist to ensure accessibility.
However, this does not capture the spirit of the ADA. The people creating WCAG policies recognize that there are still improvements that can be made, which is why WCAG 2.2 was recently released, going beyond the previous standard of WCAG 2.1. The ADA and WCAG provide the foundation, but the responsibility lies in how people apply them, ensuring people can actually access and benefit from resources.
Everyone’s experiences are different. The Disability Justice Principle of Leadership of Those Most Impacted discusses this gap in accessibility, stating that accessibility must be centered around the ideas of those who are most impacted. People with disabilities should proactively be involved in the process of making the internet more accessible. For more information on disability justice principles, go to the resources tab on the curriculum page.
Accessibility is about inclusion in every aspect of life, including healthcare, education, community resources, and the digital world. Laws like the ADA and guidelines like the WCAG are essential tools that push us to design better, more inclusive environments. For web professionals, such as designers and developers, their work is essential in determining who can participate, learn, and express their opinion. Thank you
Gina Namkung
Hi everyone, my name is Gina and I’m a second year at UCLA! I’m really excited and grateful to be part of this project, so a huge shoutout to Harshita. A little background about me, I began my creative journey as a comic creator, which taught me a lot about visual storytelling.
At UCLA, I decided to step out of my comfort zone, and I applied to an organization called Creative Labs to work as a designer for an app. Through 3 months of long nights and hard work, I discovered my passion for UI/UX design. I really enjoy designing because it challenges me to create not just for myself, but also for others, ensuring users have meaningful and intuitive experiences.
Today, I’ll be talking about inclusive design systems and how we can create a better user experience for all. And all it takes is thinking a little more about color, motion and UX in general. To start off, you may be wondering, what is inclusive design? Great question. Inclusive design focuses on serving as many user needs as possible, rather than making a product that serves as many people as possible. That’s universal design, and a topic for another day.
For example, people with color blindness may struggle to read words on a screen or understand a page properly due to a low contrast ratios of color. This is why it is vital to use high contrast, following the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (more commonly known as WCAG) of a 4:5:1 ratio for normal text, and a 3:1 ratio for large text. Try to think of different ways beyond color to differentiate designs, such as adding labels or icons that can act as guides.
Additionally, motion in UI/UX design can get a little over overboard. Too many moving parts on a screen can overwhelm users, particularly those with vestibular disorders, as it can cause dizziness and nausea. Make sure to use motion purposefully, only in specific cases, like to guide attention or show the hierarchy of a page. Using unnecessary zooms or animations can simply confuse and disorient the user, rather than awe them.
Inclusive design can significantly impact peoples’ lives for the better. For example, many older generations struggle to use technology. Think about a couple of reasons why that might be the case. One I think about is bad eyesight. As someone with glasses, it gets hard for me to stare at a screen for too long, especially if I have to squint to see the words on a page because the font is too small. Many older people also have presbyopia, a form of farsightedness. To help make the UI more inclusive, opt for more legible fonts and maybe even a button for users to customize the font size to their liking.
Overall, inclusive design requires a lot of research and testing from a diverse population. It is a vital for UI/UX designers to have a little empathy and think about how to design websites, apps, and platforms that can fit a large range of user needs. Next time you squint at a page because the colors on a page aren’t high contrast enough, or you get a little dizzy from all the motion graphics on an app, think about changes you would implement to make it more inclusive. You could even make it a case study!
Thank you for listening, hope you all have a great day.
Kimberley Wu
Hi everyone, my name is Kimberley, and I’m really excited to be speaking with you today. I’m currently a student designer, and over the past few months, I’ve been exploring how design can shape not only the way we interact with technology, but also why accessible design is so important in meeting the needs of all users.
Design matters to me because it’s not just about making something look good; it’s about making something that works well for everyone, regardless of the challenges or difficulties they face. Whether that means creating a product that’s easy to use, a website that feels intuitive, or an interface that invites more people in, design has the power to either open doors or create barriers.
Over the past few months, I’ve had the chance to learn more about accessible design, especially while working with the Quantum Computing Student Association at UCLA to design their website. That project really pushed me to ask questions like What makes accessible design so important? Why do we need it, and how can we make both design and technology work for everyone?
This brings me to today’s topic: Deaf Tech & Real Life.
When we think about accessibility for the Deaf and hard-of-hearing community, the first thing that usually comes to mind is captions. Most people think of captions as just words at the bottom of the screen. But captions are actually one of the most powerful accessibility tools we have. As you might’ve guessed, their importance isn’t just to provide words being spoken, but they give the viewers context, timing, and emotions.
But as important as captions are, their reliability is just as critical. Especially when captions are auto-generated, they need to be proofread, include speaker identification, and describe meaningful sounds, like music starting or laughter, especially in films or movies. Without those details, the Deaf or hard-of-hearing viewer is missing a key part of the experience.
Think about being in a lecture or presentation. If the captions can’t pick up important terms, or if they lag behind the speaker, it creates an immediate barrier to learning. Something as simple as offering accurate captions and full transcripts can mean the difference between access and exclusion.
Now let’s talk a bit about UI design. Accessibility isn’t just about adding captions, it’s about building systems that include Deaf and hard-of-hearing users from the very beginning.
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For example, apps and video platforms should allow users to easily toggle captions on or off, adjust font size, or change color schemes for better readability. Interfaces that rely on sound, like notification ding or an amber alert, should also offer visual cues so that no message is missed.
A great example of designing with accessibility in mind is Real-Time Text, also known as RTT. It was originally created to help Deaf and hard-of-hearing users communicate in real time without needing to speak or hear; essentially live-texting during a phone call. Today, RTT is also used in high-risk situations, like calling 911 when someone can’t speak out loud. It even captures the audio from the caller’s end, making it useful to far more people than it was originally intended for.
This is a perfect example of Curb-Cut Effect, the idea that when we design for a specific, often marginalized group, we end up creating solutions that benefit everyone. Just like how sidewalk ramps help not only wheelchair users but also maybe parents with strollers or travelers with rolling luggage, accessible tech makes the entire system more inclusive for everyone.
Another great example I read about involved FaceTime or video calls. These video calls encouraged users to keep their video on, not just for engagement, but to allow the other caller(s) to lip-read and read facial expressions. That’s not something you can fix with a simple feature; it’s about designing for entire experience with accessibility in mind. These may sound like small design decisions, but for the person using the product, they can be the difference between feeling included and being excluded.
That’s the power of intentional design! When we build with inclusion in mind, we create a better world for everyone.
However, these issues become bigger in academic and tech spaces. A Deaf student might have captions available during lectures, but still struggle during group discussions, lab work, or networking events where the tools don’t support them. Deaf professionals face similar barriers when platforms don’t provide communication options beyond phone calls or voice-based tools.
The key takeaway here is that accessibility isn’t just a feature, it’s a foundation. If a student can’t fully participate in class because of poor captions, or if a developer can’t use a platform because the UI wasn’t designed with them in mind, then the system itself is failing.
So, what can we take away from this? Accessible design is not a nice-to-have add-on; it’s a necessity and it should be. Captioning needs to be accurate and customizable. UI design needs to think beyond the majority user and embrace the diversity of real users. And both academic and tech spaces need to actively remove barriers rather than putting the burden on Deaf individuals, or anyone with a disability, to “adapt” to it.
I hope this talk gave you a better understanding of why accessible design matters, especially when it comes to Deaf Tech and real-life experiences. I also hope you learned something new, or saw accessibility from a different perspective that you’ve never considered before. Let this be a reminder to prioritize accessibility from the very beginning of every design project you take on.
Thank you.
Mehal Mittal
Link to slides: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1aoxLLNDwielP79LI6cOTVwBsYrMfdyoU
AI Bias against Disability, Impacts on the Tech Industry and Accessibility.
But first, some things about me. Hi! I am Mehal. I’m from Lucknow, India, a second year undergraduate student at UCLA majoring in Statistics and Data Science. And some fun facts about me are that I’m interested in henna, photography, filmmaking, chai/matcha, exploring around with my friends, and so much more.
Now let’s move on to Disability Bias in AI.
According to a 2023 study by the United Nations, about 16% of the global population or roughly 1.3 billion people are disabled, including 240 million children.
AI usage among the disabled is pretty popular. For example AI tools like speech to text and vice versa, healthcare like monitoring and vital tracking, AI powered tutoring etc. Many have a need to use these, but are denied tools or just are simply inaccessible. But why?
It all comes down to Training AI Models.
These AI models are like aliens ready to learn everything about Earth (but they’re not too scary!). They are so hungry for information. AI models like ChatGPT or Gemini are ‘trained’ by feeding them massive datasets of texts, images, media etc. They process and fine tune this data. Training data doesn’t always include disabled people or shows them accurately. AI models ‘learn’ and replicate these biases. The disabled remain like outliers on the graph. And everybody relies on AI for everything in today’s era. Its wide use means that whatever it replicates, may be passed on to everybody.
AI systems recognize only pre-programmed patterns of behaviour, which means that these technologies have limited capacity to understand how diverse human beings are. Algorithms are based on a statistical average, which means that people with disabilities who might not fit the average are excluded in many areas. For example, an AI hiring tool may misinterpret the facial disfigurement of a candidate during the recruitment process for a job. Or it may flag a disabled person’s resume as ‘poor fit’ due to it not recognizing their disability related experiences as valuable for the job. And this is how AI bias affects disabled people in day to day life.
Let’s talk Accessibility. But, what is it?
Accessibility is shaped by what we need to do, our interactions with the environment, and our personal preferences. So in essence, a person with a disability can acquire the same information, engage in the same interactions, enjoy the same services, in an equally effective, equally integrated manner, with substantially equivalent ease of use, as a person without a disability.
But why does it even matter?
Because its goal is to promote equal opportunities and to eliminate discrimination by letting everybody participate fully and enjoy the same rights and benefits. But, because of such AI bias, inaccessibility majorly affects disabled people. Inaccessible ramps outside a building, inaccessible public transportation, or even inaccessible education to a visually impaired student hinders the very thought of inclusion in our society.
And what about the tech industries?
Disabled people heavily rely on technology. For example, speech to text and text to speech, smart wheelchairs, navigation apps, AI driven prosthetics, smart home devices like Alexa, and etc. If AI isn’t trained to recognize disabilities, its performance is unreliable for everybody, as discussed before. If over a billion people are disabled, then the tech industry is missing out on over a billion opportunities. Excluding disabled people means excluding cases that can push technology forward.
So the bottom line…
The usage of generative AI having little understanding of the physically challenged is already having serious implications in our society. AI models need to be trained on diverse data including disabled subjects to uphold the idea of accessibility and inclusion.
And that is a wrap! Thank you.