What happened
Most AI accessibility tools help one person do a task alone, but this research proposes AI should instead support how disabled people actually work — often in teams where different people contribute different abilities. The shift means AI would translate between collaborators, share information across different access needs, and act as a real team member rather than just a personal assistant.
Why it matters
For decades, accessibility tech assumed disabled people work alone; this reframes AI to support the collaborative, interdependent reality of how many disabled workers actually operate, which could change how accessibility tools get built and deployed.