On 8 July, Rafie Cecilia joined the panel discussion at AI Tools for Everyone: Advancing Disability Inclusion, hosted by The Tesseract Academy at the London School of Economics as part of London Data Week.

The event included a very important discussion of the impact AI has on the life of people with disabilities. Contributions from colleagues at Vision Ability offered powerful examples of how AI is already supporting disabled people’s autonomy and independent living. However, this potential must be considered alongside questions of access, affordability and long-term responsibility. Around 80% of disabled people live in the Global South, where poverty, infrastructure and affordability can create significant barriers to accessing digital technologies. In the world’s least developed countries, only 36% of the population used the internet in 2022. In some countries, disabled people are also more than twice as likely to experience multidimensional poverty. Strong policy, responsible development and the meaningful involvement of disabled people are therefore needed to prevent a future “gentrification” of assistive AI, in which valuable tools become less accessible, less effective or simply too expensive for those who rely on them.

Find out more London Data Week events here