Dr Sarah Lewthwaite explores the challenges and opportunities of building digital futures where accessibility is an essential feature of systems and infrastructure. AI puts us at a crossroads. How can we build an inclusive future?
Does the design and development of digital systems accommodate people with a range of needs and requirements? The current answer to this question is not encouraging, and it points to a need for change and the development of accessibility skills and capacity.
Our digital world requires systems, platforms and tools that can be used by all, to ensure everyone, inclusive of disabled and older people, can participate in our digital society. Yet digital accessibility is at a crossroads. Accessibility is a site of innovation, and new laws commit to accessibility as a foundation for digital life and commit to accessibility being built into systems from the start. However, building accessibility knowledge and expertise can be challenging, and the advent of AI poses new questions.
AI-generated accessibility has some clear benefits with the potential to build and scale aspects of accessibility. But because AI statistically replicates the dominant discourse, there is also a potential for recursive bias, leading to algorithmic ableism. AI risks reinforcing patterns of exclusion and creating new ones.
Will AI give disabled people an expanded range of futures, or will it restrict their future options? What are the implications of AI for the development of expertise and community knowledge? What risks being lost to AI in access relationships? Or in the safeguarding of accessibility in view of the development of probabilistic interfaces?
To build an accessible digital future for all, it is vital to maintain regulatory frameworks and standards for ethical and responsible use. It is equally crucial for infrastructure and systems to be designed and developed by interdisciplinary communities that include disabled people at all stages. Accessibility is a shared endeavour.
About the speaker:
Sarah Lewthwaite is a Principal Research Fellow, and Co-Director of the Centre for Research in Inclusion, at the University of Southampton. Her research interests centre on the teaching and learning of accessibility in universities and the workplace. She also maintains expertise in inclusion, disability and new media research, inclusive and accessible research methods, and student experience. Sarah leads the ‘Teaching Accessibility in the Digital Skill Set’ study as a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow, and she is a Co-Investigator on the ESRC project ‘New Approaches to Digital Skills Development’.
Sarah's bio: https://www.southampton.ac.uk/people/5xdz97/doctor-sarah-lewthwaite [link]
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