How AI tools can redefine universal design to increase accessibility

At Google, we believe in building for everyone and accessibility (A11y) is a key part of that. Our teams work with communities to build products with and for people with disabilities, incorporating accessibility from the beginning of the development process. Today, generative AI provides us with the opportunity to make our tools even more personal and adaptive.

People with disabilities make up 16% of the world’s population. With the adaptive capabilities of generative AI, we have an opportunity to better serve 1.3 billion people globally by adopting a "Nothing About Us Without Us" approach to our tech development. We believe technology should be as unique as the person using it. We’re creating a world where every interface shapes itself to your preferences, working in harmony with you, exactly as you are.

In this blog, we are proud to introduce Natively Adaptive Interfaces (NAI), a framework for creating more accessible applications through multimodal AI tools. With NAI, UI design can move beyond one-size-fits-all towards context-informed decisions. NAI replaces static navigation with dynamic, agent-driven modules, transforming digital architecture from a passive tool into an active collaborator.

Following rigorous prototyping to validate this framework, we have an emerging path toward universal design. Our goal is to create environments that are more inherently accessible to people with disabilities.

Community investments: Nothing About Us, Without Us

Building on the long-standing advocacy principle of "Nothing About Us, Without Us," we continue to integrate community-led co-design into our own development lifecycles.

Furthermore, this co-design approach drives economic empowerment and fosters employment opportunities within the disability community, ensuring that the people informing the technology are also rewarded for its success.