Episode 36- Accessibility and GenerativeAI
0-0:12 Orthotonics Accessible as Gravity plays and fades out
0:13 Hello and welcome to Accessagogy a podcast about accessibility and pedagogy. I’m your host Ann Gagné and this podcast is recorded on land covered by the Upper Canada Treaties and within land protected by the Dish with One Spoon Wampum Agreement, which is the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe peoples.
0:34 Welcome to episode thirty-six which I am going to subtitle “sigh okay fine I’ll talk about GenerativeAI grumble grumble grumble.” There are many reasons why it has taken me this long to cave and have an episode on Generative Ai. One is that there’s a lot to say about it, more than can be said in a 10 minute episode that I do in these podcasts. But also, two there’s really nothing to say, like nothing that you haven’t already heard many times. But maybe not, because to be honest when you think about accessibility there are very few vocal pockets when it comes to Generative AI and higher ed.
1:15 So in this episode I’m going to focus on 4 things that you should be thinking about in terms of Generative AI and accessibility. Things that maybe you haven’t considered or even know about in terms of how to operationalize it in your thought process and your design. It will be a shorter to the point episode, but I hope that it starts conversations.
1:38 So number one. Think about the misinformation that’s being perpetuated by Generative AI data pulls about disability and accessibility. There was this post on LinkedIn last week by Meryl Evans about how someone had asked ChatGPT about Tiger Woods and disability and that the text that was provided was about his golf handicap. Because of course it misunderstood the word handicap as actually relating to disability in the year 2025. So this shows that there’s a real need for a person in the machine to give context, and I have real concerns about what’s going to happen as we keep churning out like half truths and lies as truth in the information that we can find online.
2:19 It is bad enough that there are so many misconceptions about accessibility and disability. That accessibility is only UDL. That accessibility is access. That accommodation processes are easier to get than they have ever been which is incredibly untrue. And then you add bad information being crafted through prompts in Generative AI tools where no one is really taking the time to think about where the data is coming from, it’s only make it harder for disabled folks and those who do accessibility work to do that work in the future.
2:52 Two Generative AI can help support accessibility, but it is absolutely not the panacea you are looking for. And some concerns that I have for example, like this HEQCO report that was published a few months ago making Generative AI seem like this holy grail for accessibility. And that’s not true and in fact is the very thing that folk in digital accessibility community have been talking about and trying to warn people against for a very long time are overlays on websites so that people stop believing that there is this sorta one stop shopping tool for all and every disability support when it comes to the web.
3:28 The thing about supporting accessibility is that it’s highly contextual to the individual person and the problem with that is that systems don’t really like highly contextual because that scales really poorly. Businesses and industry and institutions like they like really don’t like things that don’t scale. And so yes, some generative AI tools are amazing for supporting or foundationally sort of setting a new bar for accessibility supports. So think about automatic captions, which are still not perfect, but now exist on many things. Think about alt-texts that are being generated based on guesses, which are sometimes wildly inaccurate, but it at least it gets folk to start thinking about those things in the first place and why they need editing.
4:15 Number three, and something that I’ve presented on in a few places already. Think about the user experience of Generative AI that you’ve decided to use in your classroom space from an accessibility point of view. Is it screen reader accessible? Can you navigate it in different ways? Is it highly visually dependent and there excluding some learners and users from using it?
4:39 Again this is where pedagogical and design decisions shouldn’t be done in silos. It’s important to have conversations with your centres for teaching and learning, your educational technology folk, your IT support staff, and see what they already know about vetting these tools and platforms for inclusion and accessibility.
4:58 If they have not done that work, if no one has gone through a VPAT, or lack thereof, then something that you want to use, you should use that as a query for them and say, hey maybe we should look at this, right? Ultimately instructors have an opportunity to change the narrative around technology and inclusion with the tool and platform choices that they are making. But you need to bring that up in conversation and those accessibility needs need to be said in the spaces that we’re in, over and over again to get it on folks’ radar.
5:30 Finally, number four, I would love for folk to stop and think about the environmental impacts of everything in relation to accessibility and disability. So I’m not someone who is immersed in critical ecological literature theory, or ecological pedagogical studies, or climate pedagogy, but if you’re looking for someone who is doing really great work in that I’m going to link to Karen Costa on the episode page. And also to some things that Brenna Clarke Gray has written. I would love folk to stop to think about how this ecological impact has an incredible impact on disabled folk. So, think forest fires and folk who already are isolated due to long COVID or any other respiratory support need. Think floods and losing your home in an climate emergency and how incredibly difficult it is to evacuate folks who have different disabilities. And how often sadly, disabled folk are forgotten in those exact evacuation plans that people put out in the first place.
6:36 So how comfortable are you using a technology in your classroom that could be complicit in that. And I mean I know academe is often super okay with being complicit in a lot of harms. But like how do the students in your class feel about this; do they even know have they even thought about it? Do you leave time in your course design to reflect on those impacts?
6:58 So that’s it, that’s episode 36 of Accessagogy, with finally and begrudgingly an episode on generative AI and accessibility, with 4 things that you may want to stop and reflect on in relation to Generative AI and accessibility.
7:12 Remember that I want this to be a space where you can ask questions and share concepts that you’d like me to discuss. So if there’s anything that I’ve mentioned here about generative AI and accessibility and you’d want me to elaborate on it in future episodes please ask.
7:26 As always if you have any ideas or aspects of your pedagogy that you’d like me to address in this podcast, please feel free to send me an email at Accessagogy so that’s acc e ss a gogy at gmail dot com. I’ll try to include as many of those suggestions as possible in the podcast because ultimately, this podcast is for you. So that’s it, that’s episode 36 of Accessagogy, thanks so much for following along and asking how can I make my space more accessible today? Have a great week!