17 MAY 2023 09:00 | CGI Netherlands
This is an expert quote from Alice Boter, Senior Conversation Designer at CGI Netherlands.
May 18 is the day we reflect globally on digital accessibility for people with disabilities. The purpose of Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) is to start the conversation about digital accessibility.
I would like to turn the word awareness into action. It should be a day of action. I call on all fellow chatbot builders to schedule an action item today to see if their chatbot is accessible to people who are, for example, blind or visually impaired. In the Netherlands, 4 million people have disabilities. If we don't solve this, we will put a huge group out of business.
Chatbots can solve a problem
Chatbots can help people who are blind or visually impaired to get information in an easy way. We then have to make sure that the chatbots we build are accessible to screen readers and a braille reader. Bartiméus, a school for students who are blind or visually impaired, already did tests with children who started asking questions to ChatGPT. That went quite well. A chatbot can immediately answer your question. For them, that's much easier than plowing through an endless list of snippets from Google. And then hoping that you end up on an accessible site where maybe the answer is somewhere.
A chatbot isn't just there to help those few people who have absolutely nothing wrong with them
Chatbot builders are responsible for making the bot accessible. Precisely because we can provide access to information in an easy way, we as chatbot builders should pay much closer attention to that accessibility.
The best time to do something about it is right when building a chatbot. The second best time is today.
