AI's role in improving accessibility

Marketplace Tech

American Public Media

Technology, News

4.6 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 28 November 2025

⏱️ 4 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Accessibility has long been aided by the advancement of technology. When it comes to artificial intelligence, accessibility is top of mind for Taylor Arndt, Chief Operations Officer at Techopolis Online Solutions. Arndt has been blind since birth, and so accessibility has been a lifelong battle. When she was in school, she often received physical materials she was unable to read. So, she bought her own hand-held scanner and downloaded a screen reader. At 14, Arndt taught herself to code. Now as a coder working on AI, Arndt says in order for it to help others, the AI models need to be trained on data that has already incorporated accessibility measures.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Making artificial intelligence truly accessible.
0:05.1	From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech.
0:08.7	I'm Megan McCarty Carrino.
0:14.7	In many ways, artificial intelligence has improved accessibility for people with disabilities.
0:25.6	Screen readers, captions, and note takers can all be powered by AI.
0:30.6	It also lets people use natural language to interact with devices, or even complete complex tasks like coding.
0:38.5	But even as AI pushes accessibility ahead, there remain big gaps in how inclusive the development
0:45.1	of this technology is.
0:47.1	Today on the show, a voice on how AI can create a world where accessibility isn't just an
0:53.2	afterthought.
0:56.0	My name is Taylor-Aunt. I am living in Austin, Texas, and I am the chief operations officer at Tocopoulos Online Solutions,
1:04.0	where I work on apps, AI, accessibility, and making a difference. So technically I have blindness, so I have an eye condition, septo-optic dysplasia.
1:17.8	My optic gear fully didn't develop, and that caused a bunch of other things.
1:23.8	I grew up in a small town in Michigan, and resources were kind of scarce. So I had to be my own
1:29.8	advocate at the age of like 10 or 12. I'll just give you a couple examples. Like I got homework
1:34.6	that wasn't accessible. It was just on paper. How am I going to use it? Okay, great. I'm going to
1:39.1	have a scanner. I bought myself a little portable scanner that I have. So when the teacher would
1:43.9	hand out paper,
1:45.0	I grab the scanner, put the work in there.
1:47.9	And what it does is it takes the printed objects, and it puts it into text, so that I'd be able to complete it.
1:55.2	That kind of led me to coding at 14, because I'm like, well, if I can solve these problems for myself, I can
2:01.9	solve these problems for other people.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 11 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from American Public Media, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of American Public Media and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.