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We talk a lot about AI reshaping the future.
We talk less about who gets to participate in it.
In this episode of FUTUREPROOF., I sit down with Corbb O’Connor, who leads accessibility advocacy at Level Access. Corbb is blind. He’s spent years consulting enterprise teams — from financial institutions to global brands — helping them design digital experiences that are actually usable by people with disabilities.
This isn’t a compliance conversation.
It’s a systems conversation.
As AI systems increasingly generate interfaces, content, decisions, and workflows at scale, accessibility can no longer be an afterthought. If accessibility isn’t embedded upstream — in product design, in data pipelines, in AI outputs — exclusion compounds just as quickly as innovation.
Corbb argues that inclusion is not a moral add-on. It’s infrastructure. It’s economics. It’s risk management. And increasingly, it’s competitive advantage.
We explore:
- Why accessibility should be treated like cybersecurity — a non-negotiable requirement, not a retroactive fix
- The difference between “AI for accessibility” and “accessible AI”
- Why automated scanning tools can’t replace human testing
- How poor product design quietly excludes users without teams even realizing it
- Why psychological safety and culture matter just as much as tooling
- And whether AI will widen or narrow accessibility gaps over the next five years
If digital products define access to banking, healthcare, employment, and civic life, then accessibility isn’t a feature.
It’s participation.
And as AI becomes core infrastructure, the question becomes sharper:
Are we scaling inclusion — or scaling exclusion?
