9. Artificial Intelligence, Accessibility and Inclusion

This chapter examines inclusion and accessibility for people with disabilities as a mature—but still uneven—societal project, grounded in community participation, meaningful relationships, personalised support, and self‑determination. Building on the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, it reframes accessibility as a universal right: the systematic removal of barriers that limit autonomy and equal participation in physical and digital environments. It then argues that recent advances in generative, multimodal AI can materially expand access by enabling content to be translated, restructured, and represented across formats and languages, and by strengthening assistive technologies (e.g., speech-to-text, captioning, and visual recognition). In this framing, the chapter proposes thinking of AI less as “artificial intelligence” and more as “accessible intelligence” when it is used to adapt information to diverse user needs.The chapter extends this argument to education, positioning AI as a practical enabler of differentiated instruction by helping teachers generate learner‑tailored materials, propose strategies, and deliver outputs in accessible forms—making personalised learning more feasible under resource constraints. At the same time, it cautions against a simplistic “AI = inclusion” narrative: AI tools may themselves be inaccessible, can reproduce bias, and may widen the digital/AI divide through cost and skills gaps, making AI literacy a precondition for equitable benefit. The conclusion frames inclusion as inherently generative: designing for people with disabilities produces innovations that improve life for everyone, and the same principle should guide the design and governance of AI-enabled digital ecosystems from the outset.