When designed with lived in heart experience, AI tools such as conversational screen readers, adaptive dashboards and captions in real time do not just barriers; They expand the opportunity. They transform access to agency and freedom to learn, lead and contribute fully.
Avoid a ‘shining version of the same old bias’
Surashree Rahane was born with several physical disabilities, including club foot and polymelia, a condition where affected people are born with extra limbs. As she grew up in a family where disability was part of daily life, she never saw it as a limitation but just another way of navigating the world.
“My mentors always said, don’t just seek jobs, create them,” she shares. “This is how I learned that leadership in itself is inclusion.”
Ms. Rahane is now founder and CEO of the Yearbook Canvas, a technology platform that specializes in digital yearbooks for academic institutions. When she built her company, she saw how structural barriers, such as unavailable infrastructure, partial financing networks and rigid education systems, persist.
To tackle these challenges, she is currently working with the Newton School of Technology near New Delhi focusing on inclusive academic design and AI-based learning tools that adapt to each student’s pace. “AI can democratize access to education,” she says, “but only if we learn to understand different students. Otherwise, we risk building a brighter version of the same old bias.”
Auxiliary technologies authorize people with disabilities.
‘The great equalization’
From voice-to-speech tools to people with speech inhibitions to gesture-based wheelchair control, technology now breaks barriers once as permanent.
Prateek Madhav, CEO of Assistech Foundation (ATF), describes AI as “The Great Equalizer.” “While the world cares that AI is taking jobs,” he says, “for people with disabilities, AI creates them.”
Ketan Kothari, a consultant at Xavier’s Resource Center for The Visually Challenge in Mumbai, demonstrates how AI tools have made him completely independent at work. “Today I can format a document, access meetings with live captions and even generate visual descriptions through apps,” he explains. “AI has transformed the imagination into function.”
Purple Party contains predominantly Indian entrepreneurs and business leaders, but as Tshing Dema from the UN Development Coordination Office reflects, “This is not a single country history-it is a global transition. Inclusion is not just about laws or infrastructure; it is about thinking and shared design. The future should be built not only for humans but with them.”
