People with disabilities show that AI can ‘be a bridge’

Technological advancement will only be real progress when it includes all the bodies, minds and ways of existing that society has tried to silence

While much of the public debate about artificial intelligence (AI) focuses on fears about unemployment, surveillance and the concentration of power in the hands of large corporations, another movement — silent but profoundly transformative — is underway. It is born from the resistance and creativity of people with disabilities who, instead of fearing technology, are appropriating it to redefine the very concept of inclusion.

O Purple Festcarried out in Goa, Indiais a symbolic example of this new horizon. More than an innovation event, the festival has become a space of resistance and hope. There, entrepreneurs, researchers and activists showed how AI can become a instrument of liberationnot exclusion.

From accessibility to autonomy

AI-powered assistive technologies — such as screen readers with voice interaction, adaptive panels e real-time automatic captioning systems — these are not mere futuristic gadgets. They represent the concrete possibility of transform access into autonomyand autonomy in freedom: freedom to learn, work, lead and exist fully in a world that has imposed barriers for centuries.

A real inclusion It is not born from institutional discourses or socially responsible marketing campaigns. It is born from the protagonism of those who experience exclusion firsthand. It is the case that Surashree Rahaneentrepreneur born with congenital clubfoot e polimeliawho grew up in an environment where disability was not an obstacle, but rather a different way of perceiving the world. When creating the Yearbook Canvasa digital yearbook startup, and by collaborating with Newton School of TechnologyRahane shows what happens when technological knowledge combines with social experience: innovation becomes inclusion.

She recalls that “AI can democratize access to education, but only if we teach it to understand students with different profiles”. It’s a crucial — and deeply political — warning. Technology is not neutral. If algorithms are trained with the same biases that shape society, we will only have a brighter version of the same old bias.

The great equalizer

The speech of Prateek MadhavCEO yes AssisTech Foundation (ATF)resonates like a manifesto: “While the world worries about AI taking away jobs, for people with disabilities, AI is creating jobs.” This inversion of logic reveals the emancipatory potential of technology when it is guided by human values ​​and not by market interests.

In a capitalist system that has excluded bodies and minds outside the productive norm for centuries, AI appears — for the first time — as a “great equalizer”. For people with disabilities, it is not a threat, but an opportunity. The example of Ketan Kothariconsultant for Xavier Resource Center for the Visually Impairedillustrates this silent revolution. With the support of AI tools, he is now able to fully participate in professional life: “formatting documents, participating in meetings with live subtitles, generating visual descriptions”. Technology, when guided by empathy and justice, transforms imagination in functionality.

Inclusion: a collective project, not charity

As you remember Tshering Demado UN Development Coordination Officewhat is happening in India is part of a global transition. Inclusion, she says, “isn’t just about laws or infrastructure; it’s about mindset and shared planning. The future of work must be built not just for people, but with them.”

This statement carries a fundamental principle of the left: inclusion is not a concession, it is collective construction. Technology alone does not change the world — it is social and political relations that determine whether it will be liberating or oppressive.

Another possible future

What was seen in Purple Fest was not a blind celebration of innovation, but a political claim to the right to fully exist. It was proof that AI can — and should — be used to promote social justice, equity and independence.

While Silicon Valley focuses its efforts on creating tools to increase profits and efficiency, people like Rahane, Madhav and Kothari show that there is another way: that of technology as a common gooddeveloped from the experiences of those who need it most.

This is the ethical and political challenge of our time: preventing artificial intelligence from reproducing the same system of exclusion it promised to solve. May it not become the digital mirror of social inequalities, but rather a instrument of collective emancipation.

If guided by empathy, solidarity and justice, AI can do what few human systems have achieved: help humanity become a little more human.

Because true technological advancement is not the one that replaces people, but the one that free them.