Haben speaking. Hello! There are companies out there that are claiming you can add one line of code to your website, and it'll be fully accessible to blind and disabled people. Beware of companies claiming to use AI solutions to make websites accessible. AI is a tool, and right now it's extremely limited in what it can do for accessibility.

I gave examples of auto-captioning in my last video. Auto-captioning turns my name, Haben Girma, into "happen grandma." Imagine if you are a deaf person relying on the captioning and it's auto-captioning. You miss out — key terms, important details, — if you're only relying on AI based solutions like auto-captioning.

So it's a myth out there that you can rely on AI for all your accessibility needs. AI is great in certain, very specific situations, but these companies out there — there are many of them, so it's not just one — they're claiming you can add one line of code and then your website will be accessible given their AI-based accessibility solutions. It's extremely frustrating to me, and many of my blind friends, that millions of dollars are being poured into these companies.
One of these companies is called AccessiBe, and I went to their website. I'm blind, I'm a screenreader user. So I navigate websites using a screenreader, and on their own website I encountered barriers. If I'm finding barriers on their own website, how can I trust them to make other websites accessible? I don't. I don't trust them to make other websites accessible and I'm not the only one.  

Over 400 accessibility experts and allies have signed a document describing the harms these services cause. Beware of companies claiming to use AI-based solutions to make websites accessible. Avoid these companies. Take full responsibility for accessibility. Disabled people are 1 billion people around the world. That's a huge market. When you invest in accessibility, you get more customers, more revenue in the long run, and your product is better overall. Invest in real accessibility solutions.