Ep28. Accessibility in the age of AI

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Episode 28 • 24th July 2025 • The Web Usability Podcast • Lucy Collins from Web Usability

Ep28. Accessibility in the age of AI

With Adi Latif

Lucy Collins

Welcome to the Web Usability podcast, where we explore what it takes to make the web a more accessible and enjoyable place for everyone. Whether you're a website owner, developer, or just a curious mind, we're here to share insights, tips, and stories that can help you improve the user experience of your digital world. I'm Lucy Collins, Director of Web Usability and your guide on this journey to better usability. If you need a transcript of this podcast, just visit our website at www.webusability.co.uk .

Now, let's dive in!

Today I am delighted to be joined by Adi Latif, digital accessibility coach and long time friend of Web Usability!

Adi is a man of many talents. He is an experienced digital consultant and brings many years of knowledge and his own lived experience of being blind to the table when discussing how to make the online world work for everyone. He’s a brilliant and entertaining public speaker. He’s a snowboarder (ex professional I might add), yogi, sometimes gamer and generally really lovely guy.

We’ve had the pleasure of working with Adi for a number of years now to help demonstrate the real human impact that poor, inaccessible design can have on someone like him. Even as a power screen reader user, if websites are built badly, the experience can be journey stopping and Adi has a special talent for articulating these challenges while always keeping a smile on his face.

I am thrilled to have him with me today to discuss how technology enables his life and dwell just a little on the increasing role AI is playing in these experiences.

Adi, hello!

Adi Latif

Hi Lucy, thanks for having me. I love the way you said quite a nice guy. It's just good to be accurate with these things. You don't want to oversell it. Wonderful to be here. Thank you for the opportunity to chat with you.

Lucy

Not at all. It's funny because I actually wrote in my notes, really lovely guy, but for some reason I tempered it to quite a lovely guy when I was just reading it out. I don't know if you've done something while we've been chatting today to change my perception, but no, I correct myself. Adi is a really lovely guy and it's a pleasure to have him here today.

So let's start at the beginning. Let's start by exploring a bit more about you and tell me in your words who is Adi Latif?

Adi

Gosh, I don't really know myself. I'm still trying to figure it out. It's been 43 years. But currently I am a Scotsman living in London. I've been in London most of my professional life. I'm one of five children and three of us were lucky enough to be born with an eye condition that meant we went blind in our teenage years.

I always, from a young age, wanted to do things that would, you know, have people go, my God, you're blind and you can do that. And I didn't know why I wanted people to say that. I think it was to allow me to, you know, realise that myself going blind doesn't mean your life has to stop. It was also interesting because the bar is lowered, you know, when you're blind or have a disability. it's very easy. It's much easier to exceed people's expectations. So from a very young age, I love to do a lot of daredevil things, get a lot of pleasure from it, and then also, yeah, have that, you know, experience of exceeding people's expectations.

Lucy

Amazing. And so you now find yourself as a kind digital consultant, digital accessibility coach, I think you call yourself. So what took you down that path? How have you ended up where you are today?

Adi

So at university, I was studying finance and management. Yes, the really fun subject. No, I mean, no offence to anyone who does. I come from, you know, my parents were first generation immigrants, so they weren't going to exactly let me study, you know, fine arts or anything like that. So I went down that route and as it happens in the final year of university, I was approached by the university to have a look at their website. I say, look, have a listen to the website using my screen reading software, which was pretty new back in those days, because when I was blind at school, there was no screen reading software. So people would read my books to me and they would write down, you know, my essays and my answers to any of the work at school.

So when I got to uni, I started using this screen reader and it was great. the internet was kind of up and running then. And so my university wanted me to test out their website using my screen reader to see if it would be announced properly. So I did that for them and they gave me some money. And I thought, oh, that's how the world works. Because then that was probably my first paid job and for a blind person I couldn't just go and work in the local McDonald's or the local pub or you know do a paper run, do anything like that and this was like sitting at my laptop just using my screen reader and I got paid for it and I thought this is great and I guess I probably did a pretty decent job.

Digital accessibility was pretty new there so I guess they probably had nothing to compare it against.

And then a few weeks later, the university said, by the way, we've got this employer who once their website looked at and just happened to be Goldman Sachs. And I'm like, that's that big bank, isn't it? And then I realized, I've gone in a bit deep here. I'm not sure exactly what to do.

I got two visually impaired friends involved. And they had more sight than me. So they didn't use screen readers sometimes enlarge the text on the screen. So I got them involved and we did our first fully fledged audit, you know, according to the web content accessibility guidelines and we got paid for it. And so that was kind of beginnings of my experience into digital accessibility. I left it after a few years because I thought, oh, just because I'm blind, you know, I don't want to be pigeonholed into accessibility stuff. And then I went off to do some other pursuits, such as management consulting.

So I became the first one of the first blind management consultants for Accenture. That was one of those first moments again. And exceeding my own expectations as well, actually, not just others was pretty impressed that I got the job with Accenture.

And then I just did a few other things, such as running an events company where we create experiences in the pitch black. So I would get people into a room. Some people might have heard of the restaurants where they're down in the dark. I got some experience there. And then I started creating these really cool immersive events in the dark where people would dine, but also we would play some games where, you know, the communications trust, all that would be necessary. So we do that.

Then something called the Egg Drop Challenge, which I nicked from NASA, where I got a bunch of corporate employees to go into teams and in the pitch black and they were given a few items like, you know, a bit of wool, string, a bit of tape, a few other little things and a egg, a raw egg. And they had to encase this egg in the dark, work as a team. And then once the lights come on, each one person from each team would stand on a chair and then drop the egg. And we would see which team worked together in the dark to create a very safe container for that egg. so that's sort of fun events like that.

And then one of my finest moments was a Dating in the Dark event we did. And that was really, really cool, taking people out of their usual paradigms where they base attraction on just looks. But here looks were the last thing they got to see because the lights came on at the end after they got to know people.

So I did a of things like that. And then I just decided that, know, web accessibility hasn't really got any better. It's got more complex. And, you know, and I still was struggling on a daily basis using websites and apps and just didn't have to be that way. You know, it was just down to bad design. And so that's when I came back into accessibility and worked for a digital inclusion charity for a number of years. And now I coach and work with my clients to help them embed digital accessibility in their organisations.

I guess I'm an accessibility coach, so I coach people to build that, you know, skill set in their organizations, but also I say I’m a professional penny dropper, let's go with that. a lot of the times I'm brought into organisations and I am basically just humanising disability.

People think digital accessibility might just be a techie thing or they might think, the accessibility police and all the rest of it. But I try and in my sessions just show that it's just good design. And if you make your design, you know, good and if you make your design usable by more people, it gives direct independence to people like myself. I'm just a regular person like anyone else. My eyes just don't work. And if you design well, then it's like I've got my eyes back. And if you don't design well, then you're effectively making me blind. And then I have to go and have someone help me use your app or your website. So that's what I do now.

Lucy

Amazing. What a wonderfully roundabout way of getting to where you are today. But I mean, fantastic. Some amazing experiences. It makes me think I went on a date very early on in my relationship with my now husband where he took me.

Adi

Thank God, Lucy, I was wondering, like, you're married now? I hope this isn't a recent story. Okay.

Lucy

Yes, no, this is a very old story, but it made me think of an early date I went on where we went to one of those in the dark cocktail tasting things where you're obviously meant to rely on all your other senses, apart from the fact that there was a really bright fire exit light over the door. So it wasn't dark at all because everything was just bathed in like a green glow from the fire exit. So anyway, I hope your events were more successful than that.

I digress. you know, technology is obviously central, not only to your job, but you've also mentioned a couple of times some of the technology that you're using day to day to help you navigate the online world. Can you talk me through that in a bit more detail, give me kind of a typical day in the life maybe so I and people listening can understand a little bit more about what you're using and how that, as you say, gives you, hopefully gives you back your eyes if things are built in the right way for you.

Adi

Yeah, absolutely. I think I mean, I love technology and I only love it because it gives me and has a potential of giving me more independence. That's the only reason, you know, I like it.

So, you know, for example, this morning, someone buzzed the building I'm in my apartment. There was an Amazon delivery and I told them to, you know, bring it upstairs.

And they didn't, they just dumped it through the main door. And, you know, there's like 15, 16 flats in this apartment. So I went down and I'm like, oh, God, there's so many parcels and boxes down here. You know, which one is mine? And that's when I started using something I use quite a lot, an app called Be My Eyes. So I loaded up Be My Eyes. That allows me to connect to a real human being volunteer or allows me to connect to AI. So I picked the AI option because I really wasn't in the mood to chat. I just took a picture of some of the, I lined up the parcels on the floor, took a picture of them. And then, you know, it just told me, you know, what was written on each of the parcels. I said, you know, from left to right, can you tell me which one is my parcel? And it's like the third one from the left is your parcel, you know, something like that. And so that was just one example.

Be My Eyes is really, really, really good for that. I've used that in the past when, you know, I've been a keypad and you have to enter numbers and the keypad might have numbers on it or, you know, might have other buttons on it, like the call button. This is, know, a keypad to an apartment and I can take a picture and then I can just ask it, you know, describe the keypad to me.

I use AI and description platforms too. So one of my favorite new bits of tech is the Ray-Ban Meta glasses. So I wear them. So they're Ray-Ban glasses, but they've got cameras and speakers and microphones built into them. And they use the Meta's AI model on that. So I wear them. I can use them as I'm walking around, can just ask, ask, can say, hey, Meta, look, and then it takes a picture of whatever I'm looking at, and then it describes it, and then I can ask it more detail. So it's a bit like the Be My Eyes thing I mentioned, but I can keep my phone in my pocket. And this is, you know, taking the picture. I can use those glasses when I'm in a restaurant, the menu is in front of me, I can say, Meta, look and read the menu to me. And then and it does it in a smart kind of way, you know, it doesn't just read every single line of text. It will say, hey, you've got three sections on this menu. You've got starters, mains, desserts, whatever the case might be. And then I can ask it things that are really cool and save a lot of time. So can say, tell me any of the vegetarian options on this menu. And then it can pick out the vegetarian options for me. So it's the of things I would ask a real person. And so it's allowing me to do that, you know, without having a real person with me. And at times it's, you know, it's even a faster, quite a fast process.

So, so we picked up my parcel, we've walked along to the restaurant. So as I'm walking to the restaurant, I might be using Google Maps. And that will be, you know, giving me step by step directions, take the next left, next right, I'll be hearing that through my glasses. So my ears are free. As a blind person, we want to keep our hearing, our ears, you know, free. So we can hear what's around us. So the glasses, you know, convey that sound to me, but keep my ears free. So I can be getting that. I might have an app open called VoiceVista, which will use spatial audio. So you know, if I'm passing McDonald's, say it's in front of me to the right, it will say McDonald's and the sound will come from roughly that direction and it will say, you know, 10 feet ahead of you or whatever. So I use, I'll use that just to understand the crossroads, the shops I'm passing, if I want. So I'd use something like that. And then in the restaurant, like I said, that would be the menu.

I might look around the restaurant, might say, you know, describe it to me. So what are the other things, are there customers in here? Because you want to know who's, you know, who's in a place to get a feel for what it's like. I might go into the London Underground, I might go into a bus and use my glasses, you know, to see what's, you know, if there's a spare seat, for example, on the bus. And so the glasses are a real good source for that.

Other things like just before I jumped on this session, I had to put my washing machine on and I use, I've got a smart machine in my place now. So it's wifi enabled. my God. And it just changes the game. Lucy, it's amazing. Like, and I've never been able to properly use a washing machine. And I know most people just use the one function on them, but

I've always never really known the settings on a machine and at times a lot of the machines now are touch screened so they're totally flat so there's no idea when you can't see you have no idea what you're kind of touching and so you might put little bumpy bump ons on that are supplying people we're quite good with little bump ons we add them to things to show us know what button to press I might add a little bump on next to the start button so I notice the smart start button. But now I can control all that through my mobile phone, through the SmartThings app. You know, I can pick what cycle I want and then I can just press start on my phone. And also another thing I'd struggle with at times is putting in the softener or the detergent into the machine, you know, just pouring it in, making sure it goes in and stuff like that. And now these machines, they auto dose, so I don't even need to worry about that. So these are some cool examples. I mean, I can go on. So if you want any other situations or any more examples, I can come back to it. But I'll stop for now.

Lucy

I mean, that's a fantastic, like beginning, like a fantastic kind of start to the insight of all the different technologies that you're using. I know that the Ray-Ban Meta glasses are quite a new development, aren't they? You must be one of the first people to have a pair of those. So not only are you looking very cool while you're getting all this fantastic information, you're also fairly cutting edge and having access to them. How long have you been using them?

Adi

ough California at the end of: 2023

But when they first came out, they weren't very smart. So the, know, the Hey Meta feature wasn't very good. It was just very, very basic AI. And just over the last, you know, six, seven months or so, it's just got better and better and smarter. So as well as asking it what I'm looking at, I can just ask it quite a lot of general questions. I would ask other AIs like ChatGPT and Gemini.

And I can ask it those type of questions. It's not as sophisticated, but sometimes it's just practical. You know, it's on my face. I don't need to get my phone out. like researching is something really difficult for someone who's blind. know, websites aren't accessible. We don't have access to, you know, paper material so easily. And so being able to chat to an AI to, you know, for information like, you know, when I'm wearing the glasses or if I'm using other AI like ChatGPT, I can ask it stuff like what's on in King's Cross London tonight, you know, and it will tell me, you know, this band is playing in this bar. And then I can just ask it a follow up question. Oh, play that music by that band. And so it's doing loads of different things that would take me a long time to do if I was researching what's on, I'd probably have to like try and navigate inaccessible sites. And then I'd have to try and, you know, go into Spotify and then type in the name of whatever band has come up. And within seconds, I can just do that with my glasses.

Also, research is a good place where AI is really helping blind people or can do if we put it to good use. But also really, really good for education. just trying to get concepts explained to us is really, good. My cholesterol was quite high and I didn't really understand how it works and you know a lot of the healthcare pamphlets and stuff that you know that are given out in the GP surgeries that you know a lot of are paper-based or even if they're online I just don't you know don't really understand it so I just get the AI to you know describe to me how it all works in various ways I can say oh give me the tell me how cholesterol works and the metaphor of the London Underground you know system you know or just using something that you know, might understand and so you've got access to it. And obviously that's helpful for every body. So that's cool.

And one other area I really love using it for is complaining because as a blind person, as a blind person, I mean, don't speak for all blind people, obviously, the world isn't designed for us, we face barriers all the time. Things just don't work. You're using someone's app one day, the next day they've made an update to it, they've not considered your needs, something is broken, you can't access it anymore. Like the Uber app, I can't paste in an address anymore. They've done something to it and I have to type it in. Just an example there, or something on the street might not be right, it might be dangerous for someone who's blind and if I want to complain to the council.

So there's always a shopping list of complaints you've got and it just takes so much time to do that. Now you can just load up your ChatGPT and say, can you just create a wee complaint here? Some constructive feedback, make it sound nice, but get the point across. And can you put that in a letter for me, like it in a format, put it in a Word document. and can you get me the email address for the relevant person I can send that to, or the Twitter handle or something like that. So within seconds, you're able to now get your complaint sorted or to reach out to an organisation. in the past, that would take ages. And yeah, I'm going to stop there, Lucy, for the moment.

Lucy

No, I mean, I could just listen to you talk. is so many fascinating examples. But the sense I'm getting is that you are an advocate or at least a fan of the AI enhancements that you're seeing coming through in your technology.

Adi

Absolutely, because it's like having a smart person with you now, or a PA that can do the research and that can describe things for you, that can draw for you, that can do all the things that wouldn't be possible, that can describe things to you like graphs and in an educational diagram. Imagine you're doing a massage course as a blind person. I you should just have little images and people would have to describe them.

But now, you know, you can just talk to your AI and they can describe the anatomy, you know, or you can upload documents to it that you're using in your course and, and, you know, it will describe them to you. So it's just so empowering to have all this stuff done and in the world of accessibility, even when someone sends me an accessible document, you know, I can try and use AI now to try and make some sense of it.

yeah, I think, I think in terms of like, I think right now it's just a couple of things. You know, one is blind people aren't really aware, you know, not everyone is that AI has such powerful potential for them. And then obviously there's the people that aren't using tech, you know, much already. And then that step up to AI they might think is, is even harder, whereas it's probably, well, I mean, not probably, it's definitely easier because now we can get to a conversational interaction interface. So you don't really need to be a techie to be able to sit and talk to, know, ChatGPT.

Lucy

Yeah, if anything, you sort of need to unlearn a lot of the ways that you would previously do it. You know, I know when a lot of people start using Chat GPT, they use it like a Google search. And so they're kind of like trying to craft their search queries, not realizing that you can literally just ask it the question like you would ask, you like you might ask it to me or I might ask it to you as a human.

And I think there is in many ways actually coming to the digital world in an AI first way would actually be fascinating because it probably would be much easier learning curve for people to go up if they're open to true adopting the technology in the first place. Yeah, mean, fascinating. because there's obviously so much talk about how we're going to enter this state of hyper-personalization thanks to AI. And it already sounds a little bit, you know, the different ways that you're using AI enhanced technologies to meet your specific set of needs sort of sounds like we're heading in that direction already. I mean, do you think, do you feel at this point that it is offering a kind of truly personalized AI enhanced experience or what would that look like for you in a sort of perfect world?

Adi

I mean, there's obviously the concern with AI, you know, that it has built into it some of the biases that we harbour, you know, in the real world that humans have. So there is obviously serious concern there. I think it is definitely getting better. And I think it's definitely customizable, you know. So, for example, when I first started using ChatGPT, I would ask it a question or I would ask it to describe something to me and describe the Empire State Building to me because I'm blind. I'd say that. And in the beginning, it would say, oh, I'm sorry to hear that. So we would apologise in the beginning. then I was like, and then I tell them, no, you don't have to apologise to me because I've told you I'm blind, there's nothing to be apologetic for, you know, there's nothing wrong being blind and then, you know, it apologizes and so, and now it doesn't really do stuff like that.

So, you know, it's, I think it's definitely something that, you know, you can teach it, which is great. And, and also, you know, I find it so amazing where when I do tell it I'm blind, it kind of adapts its response that might give me more detail or if I'm asking it to describe something. It's definitely you have to people that are working on these models, they really have to, you know, make sure that the AI is learning for, you know, people with different needs. So the Meta glasses is going to take a picture with them by default and not very they don't really tell you the position of things. They won't say, oh, you've got cup on the left and you've got a bottle of water on the right, it would just say a table with a cup and a bottle of water on it. Whereas the Be My Eyes, that's been trained such that it provides you where something is situated. So it say there's a table and on the front left there's a cup and on the back right of the table there's a bottle of water. So then you know where things are. So definitely I think the AI can learn.

So when I tell the meta glasses, I say, I'm blind, can you describe to me, you what's in front of me, tell me where things are situated, then then it can, you know, describe it better. So it's definitely, you know, there's definitely scope there for the AI to learn. But obviously, that is that danger that it still has the, you know, its default setting might have the biases. And that's why it's important for AI to be used by people who have diverse needs so that we can educate.

I've seen on TED, there was a talk on TED, and there was a company that makes robot butlers. So they're in your house, and they're ironing, they're washing your dishes. And the CEO was saying, we had these robots in the factory, and we kept working on them, trying to make them perfect, but we realized the best way make them, you know, to learn is just to put them in the homes of people, know, the people, the employees of the company, and they'll just learn from the tasks people ask them.

And so I wrote to them and I said, look, get them in the homes of some disabled people, because then they'll learn even more, you know, and they didn't get back to me. I just wanted something to wash my dishes for me!

Lucy

I was going to say, were you hoping for an in-house robot for yourself there?

Adi

Totally, totally. I just wanted someone to iron and make me cups of tea.

Lucy

It's fascinating. I mean, God, it's because I think you are such a technology adopter. like you've all like ever since I've known you, you've always have a new technology that it feels like you're trying out. And I feel like I'm quite different in that weirdly, although I work in the digital world, like technology is I find quite scary sometimes. And I think I was of the mindset initially when, you know, chatGPT in particular exploded onto the scene, like, God, I don't know how to use this. Bury your head in the sand.

Obviously, you know, come around to it now. But I think when I hear stories about AI enhanced robots living in your house, all I think of are like, you know, I robot style scenes of Will Smith taking them out with a lightsaber or whatever happens in that movie. yeah, but no, think it's I think it's really interesting. So we're still some way to go then towards that kind of hyper personalization. And it sounds like there's still quite a lot of teaching that needs to go on, as you say.

I think we know that there will always be biases within AI. don't think we're ever going to be able to design them out because humans are inherently biased. But what's interesting is that you, by sort of having that conversation and saying, hey, no, look, you don't need to be sorry that I'm blind. Like there's nothing wrong with being blind, is, you know, hopefully then feeding into that and trying to move away, presumably from what is inherently a medical model of disability towards the more social model, which no doubt, you I'd expect that bias to exist because that bias has existed in society for far too long. So, so what, mean, what do you think, like looking forward with this, like, how do you see AI shaping the future of digital accessibility for yourself and potentially for others with visual impairments? What would you hope to see in terms of, I guess, either the technologies you're engaging with or how?

how it is working for you that would make it an even better experience for you.

Adi

I think this is two sides to the coin. One is from a blind person's point of view. you know, I feel that technology is there now to meet so many needs and to provide even more independence. Coming back to that point I made, I love tech, not because I'm a geek, because I love the fact that has a direct, you know, correlation with the level of independence, I'm able to do stuff now I couldn't have done in the past and that's just due to tech. So that's why I like it. And I think a lot of the tech and especially with all the AI stuff, it's just mind blowing, like how you can interact with AI and all the information it can give you.

So I think the more organizations that working with the tech, are aware of the needs of disabled people, then the more they'll be able to make sure that the solution they are making can be leveraged even more, you know, to provide that independence. It's, know, so I think that's, that's important. So organizations keep, that in mind. And obviously tech is not just software. And then we've got hardware stuff as well out there.

So coming back to my washing machine example, you know, was trying to find a washing machine and all the new ones were just all touch screens, no buttons on them. and if you were to get any of those designers for those machines, put a blindfold on them and say, you know, use your machine, you know, wash that towel. They'd be like, they wouldn't be able to do it. And so just having, but if they had a group of disabled people or blind people, for example, as part of their designs.

How can we make this touchscreen machine accessible? The iPhone is touchscreen and, know, touchscreen phones are accessible, but why is that machine not accessible? so getting people to understand diverse needs is really, important so that the product ends up working. So in my example, my Samsung machine is touchscreen, but they've got this really cool thing at the bottom of the panel. If you slide your finger along, they've got little tactile markings.

So you get to the tactile marking you want and then you just slide your finger up and you're pressing the touchscreen in the right spot. Incredible. So simple, so simple. But they didn't just, you know, they've added that because they are aware that if we don't add this, population is going to struggle to do a fundamental task. But this thing is designed to wash clothes and they can't do that because exactly we've just put a big padlock on this machine, know, metaphorically, we just locked people out just because, you know, we've not given it enough thought. that side, so yeah, understanding the needs and being really excited, you know, you're basically like, I don't know, some, you're able to make the blind see, you're able to make people who can't use their arms, use their arms, you know, but you know, if they can talk to their elect and they like to put the washing machine on or whatever, you know, so it's just amazing. yeah, so that is really important.

So having organizations, designers, innovators understand that they have to understand, be aware of people's needs. But also don't just look at it as a tick box, you know, you can do this for blind people. Think of it, just rise to the challenge. Know that, hey, how much better can our product make the lives of people? You know, that's the kind of question to ask. And on the other side, when we look at things like digital accessibility, know organizations, a lot of organizations want to get it right in this space. And a lot of the time they don't know how to. And so if you can get AI to help you with that, then

That's great. We don't want to make it hard for people to make things digitally accessible. We want to make it as easy as possible. And I see a lot of great potential with AI. know, and if, you know, now you can get AI to create a website for you or an app for you. Hopefully it's not got the same level of ignorance and bias and self-centeredness that some sometimes, you know, people might have, you know, they might just want their design to be picked or they want to run with the design because they think it looks cool. Whereas the AI can also take into account the fact that if they do a design in a particular way, they're going to be blocking out certain people. So hopefully using AI can help us to by default start making accessible digital.

Lucy

Yeah, yeah. So it's both that we are building products to be more accessible, but you have the tools at your end to adapt kind of for your needs so that you can then kind of consume whatever it is in a way that's best suited to you. So you're right. It's two sides of that coin, but it is still on everybody and particularly the people building the services, designing those experiences to consider those diverse needs, as you say.

Adi

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's a very exciting time in the world because the way organizations will make inclusive products is if people with disabilities are working there. You if you're sitting next to Gina from finance who has no working arms and does everything with her feet, you know, you'll be a bit more aware when you you're designing your product.

Is it easy to use physically when you try and press the buttons on it, for example? and thanks to tech, thanks to AI, there's more jobs now that someone with a disability will be able to do. And so there's more chances of a person with disability being in the workplace. So think hopefully we get to a tipping point where we are enabling empowering more of society so they can make a contribution and can be in organizations can then directly contribute to making more accessible, inclusive products that everyone can use.

Lucy

Yeah. So final thoughts, and I think I probably know the answer to this one. Do you think the future of AI and accessibility is a bright one?

Adi

I think absolutely, absolutely. I mean, it is scary as well. You know, obviously we have to, you know, this is very new and we don't know where it's going to go. And, and, you know, so that is obviously that, that danger. You know, who knows what can happen. But I think if there's enough people thinking about it, you know, make sure it's ethical and, you know, and it's helping alleviate some of the current challenges that human beings have, then yeah, definitely, you know, definitely think it's definitely a bright future.

My ultimate aim is to be guided down a mountain on a snowboard, just through tech. That would be my ultimate aim where I've got some type of drone flying above me mapping out a route communicating to me and through some form of haptics maybe something in my boots where I can feel the vibrations letting me know which way I need to go that would be my ultimate and I'll know we've made it then when that is possible.

Lucy

What an awesome, awesome dream. And I hope I can ski down just behind you and out of your way because that would be, yeah, incredible. Not at all. You'll be storming down the mountain. I'll barely be able to keep up. Addy, what a wonderful note to end on with that vision in everyone's mind. Thank you so much for sharing your experiences, your insight, your boundless energy.

Such a powerful reminder that technology when done right can really open doors and as you say, give you such independence, but only if we build it with everyone in mind. And so I really hope that this conversation might inspire a few more people to think inclusively, design responsibly and perhaps embrace the potential of AI to enhance but not hinder accessibility. Adi, let's finish off by letting people know where they can find out more about you.

Adi

Sure, I'm on LinkedIn. if you just search for Adi Latif, L-A-T-I-F, Adi Latif, you'll find me there. I'm down as an accessibility coach.

Lucy

Perfect, amazing. And we will share a link to that in the show notes. But Adi, thank you once again. It was a real pleasure to speak to you.

Thank you for tuning in to the Web Usability podcast. We really hope you enjoyed this episode. If you have any questions, comments or topics you'd like us to cover, reach out to me on lucy@webusability.co.uk or connect with us on LinkedIn. Please don't forget to like and subscribe so you never miss an episode.

Until next time, keep making the web a better place, one user at a time.

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