Building AI Products for Accessibility

Jun 12 · 6min

An accessibility product should reduce effort without taking control away from the person using it. AI can simplify text, explain vocabulary, and restructure information, but the interface around the model matters just as much as the model itself.

Preserve meaning

Simplification is not summarization. Important qualifications, numbers, names, and instructions must survive a rewrite. Showing the original beside the transformed version makes comparison easy and keeps the user in control.

Offer adjustable help

There is no single accessible reading mode. Let people choose sentence length, vocabulary level, spacing, contrast, and whether explanations appear inline or on demand.

Measure trust, not novelty

Useful evaluation includes factual consistency, reading time, correction rate, and whether users feel confident acting on the result. A feature that looks impressive but quietly changes meaning is a failure.

The best assistive AI feels less like automation taking over and more like a capable tool adapting to its user.

>