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Accessibility and AI

This collection explores the intersection of AI and accessibility, highlighting how AI can both support and pose challenges to students with disabilities. It offers practical insights, strategies, and tools for fostering inclusive, accessible learning environments.

Learners and Learning
Updated December 2024
Katie Bertel headshot
Katie Bertel
Senior Instructional Designer
Princeton University, McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning
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01

In an AI World, Let Disability Access Lead the Way

Inside Higher Ed

This article explores how academic integrity concerns surrounding AI and policies restricting access to tools could disproportionately impact students with disabilities.

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Katie Bertel

This article is helpful if you're involved in evaluating AI tools or developing policies around AI use, whether in the classroom or at the departmental/institutional level. I appreciate how clearly the authors articulate the need to prioritize students with disabilities in decisions around AI.

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In the past few months, much electronic ink has been spilled about the threat artificial intelligence, principally [ChatGPT](https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/), poses to education. Some commentators immediately evoke Stephen King levels of terror. They decry the thought of students writing lab reports, law school exam responses and even entire term papers simply by putting the essay prompts into ChatGPT, waiting a few moments and then copying the results. As we begin to assess the potential impact of these powerful communication technologies on higher education, we encourage faculty and administrators to take a collective deep breath and, when they decide to act, to consider students who have disabilities—not *also*, but *first*. In other words: prioritize universal access.
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02

How ChatGPT Could Help or Hurt Students With Disabilities

Chronicle of Higher Education

The article explores the unique ways AI can assist and pose challenges to students with disabilities. It includes suggestions for using AI to create more inclusive course materials and policies.

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Katie Bertel
I like how the article contextualizes the ways in which students are using AI to support their learning.
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User-friendly artificial-intelligence tools like ChatGPT are new enough that professors aren’t yet sure how they will shape teaching and learning. That uncertainty holds doubly true for how the technology could affect students with disabilities. On the one hand, these tools can function like personal assistants: Ask ChatGPT to create a study schedule, simplify a complex idea, or suggest topics for a research paper, and it can do that. That could be a boon for students who have trouble managing their time, processing information, or ordering their thoughts. On the other hand, fears about cheating could lead professors to make changes in testing and assessment that could hurt students unable to do well on, say, an oral exam or in-class test. And instead of using it as a simple study aid, students who lack confidence in their ability to learn might allow the products of these AI tools to replace their own voices or ideas.
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03

AI & Accessibility

Cornell University Center for Teaching Innovation

This guide provides examples of using AI to make courses more accessible and inclusive and considerations for addressing academic integrity concerns that favor Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles.

Headshot of Katie Bertel
Katie Bertel

This page's practical guidance and examples are especially helpful for thinking of ways to use AI to create more accessible learning environments. In particular, I recommend the section on using AI to expand, not restrict class activities.

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AI & Accessibility

Cornell University Center for Teaching Innovation
Open resource

Accessibility means ensuring all learners, including students with disabilities and other challenges to learning, can access and engage with all course materials, activities, and assessments. Employing the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) can help make your course more accessible. UDL is a teaching approach and course design framework that works to accommodate the needs and abilities of all learners and can help eliminate unnecessary hurdles in the learning process. It’s important to ensure that your course materials can be used with a robust set of technologies to ensure that you are creating an equitable space for all learners.

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04

An Autoethnographic Case Study of Generative Artificial Intelligence's Utility for Accessibility

ASSETS '23: Proceedings of the 25th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

Through vignettes, this study explores the real-world potential of generative AI to support people with disabilities in various tasks and contexts, while also highlighting concerns related to viability, verifiability, and ableism.

Headshot of Katie Bertel
Katie Bertel
I recommend this article if you want to understand the reality of using AI-enhanced technologies to meet the needs of people with disabilities.
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An Autoethnographic Case Study of Generative Artificial Intelligence's Utility for Accessibility

ASSETS '23: Proceedings of the 25th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility
Open resource
With the recent rapid rise in Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) tools, it is imperative that we understand their impact on people with disabilities, both positive and negative. However, although we know that AI in general poses both risks and opportunities for people with disabilities, little is known specifically about GAI in particular. To address this, we conducted a three-month autoethnography of our use of GAI to meet personal and professional needs as a team of researchers with and without disabilities. Our findings demonstrate a wide variety of potential accessibility-related uses for GAI while also highlighting concerns around verifiability, training data, ableism, and false promises.
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05

AI Accessibility Tools for Educators

Katie Bertel

This curated list of AI tools can help improve the accessibility of course materials, foster inclusion, and remove barriers to learning. While some tools cater to a general audience, many are specifically designed for people with disabilities.

Headshot of Katie Bertel
Katie Bertel
Use the tools in this resource to harness the power of AI to create more inclusive learning environments and support diverse learning needs.
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