In this session, we use the term Vibe Accessibility to describe accessibility practices that prioritize automation over genuine understanding. We argue that when access becomes automated, it reduces access literacy, diminishes collective responsibility, and ultimately leads to access-washing.
Increasingly, accessibility work is being outsourced to technological tools. Many technologies, including Microsoft tools and Learning Management Systems, have embedded access checkers, which diminish access work to a simple, often erroneous, checklist. Generative AI is increasingly promoted as a way of creating more accessible digital materials; however, generative AI technologies replicate ableist and stigmatizing ideas about disability, which can introduce harms when treated as neutral or authoritative tools for access. In this session, we use the term Vibe Accessibility to describe accessibility practices that prioritize automation over genuine understanding. We argue that when access becomes automated, it reduces access literacy, diminishes collective responsibility, and ultimately leads to access-washing. This session will invite participants to critically consider if and how technological tools can help foster accessibility literacy while retaining their own responsibility and agency in fostering collective access.
Planned activities in the session include:
(1) Large and small group discussions reflecting on participants’ own entry points to access work.
(2) Demos with optional hands-on practice with accessibility tools and reflection questions on how using these tools shifts responsibility and awareness of access.
(3)Writing individual or collective access statements that commit to access work rooted in awareness not automation
