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.

Glazko, K. S., Yamagami, M., Desai, A., Mack, K. A., Potluri, V., Xu, X., & Mankoff, J. An Autoethnographic Case Study of Generative Artificial Intelligence’s Utility for Accessibility. ASSETS 2023. https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3597638.3614548

News: Can AI help boost accessibility? These researchers tested it for themselves

Presentation (starts at about 20mins)