Can your AI pass the accessibility test?
A presentation at Microsoft Build in in San Francisco, CA, USA by Aaron Gustafson
Can your AI pass the accessibility test? Carie Fisher Sr. Accessibility Program Manager – GitHub Aaron Gustafson Principal TPM, Accessibility Innovation – Microsoft Jessie Lorenz Program Manager, AI – Microsoft
Project Planning Design Development & Coding Code Review & CI/CD Public Release Typical software development lifecycle Customer Feedback
1000x 100x 10x Project Planning Design Development & Coding Code Review & CI/CD Public Release The cost of inaccessibility Customer Feedback
AI accelerates the pace of software development… and the creation of accessibility issues.
Project Planning Design Development & Coding Code Review & CI/CD Public Release Accessibility belongs in the workflow Customer Feedback
Grounded in disability Project Planning Design Development & Coding Code Review & CI/CD Public Release Customer Feedback Planning should be grounded in disability
37% of voice-initiated Copilot tasks are abandoned mid-flow Source: Copilot Product Data, 2025 1B+ People worldwide have a disability 76% of neurodiverse employees perform better at work with Copilot Source: Microsoft Inside Track, 2026 Source: EY x Microsoft, 2024 Building voice with disability at the center
Grounded in disability Design tools Project Planning Design Development & Coding Code Review & CI/CD Public Release Customer Feedback Design tools need to make inclusive design easy
Accessibility Assistant for Figma aka.ms/Accessibility AssistantForFigma
Grounded in disability Design tools Coding models & unit tests Project Planning Design Development & Coding Code Review & CI/CD Public Release Customer Feedback All code must be consistent and validated
Coding models aren’t great on their own… 100 75 50 25 0 Base Model Instruction Files Source: microsoft.github.io/a11y-llm-eval-report Skills Deterministic Tools
Grounded in disability Design tools Project Planning Design Coding models Scanners & AI & unit tests remediation Development & Coding Code Review & CI/CD Public Release Code review is the last line of defense Customer Feedback
GitHub’s AIpowered accessibility scanner
Grounded in disability Design tools Project Planning Design Coding models Scanners & AI & unit tests remediation Development & Coding Code Review & CI/CD Public Release Customer Feedback When accessibility is integrated, magic happens
Tasks → Copilot Cowork → Speak to Done What I said: What got done: “Find that track meet email from three weeks ago, add it to my calendar, and text the other parent” Track Meet Lincoln High School Date: Sat, Jun 21 When: 10:00 AM Where: Lincoln High School Added to calendar Text sent to other parent Voice → Done
Scale inclusion, not exclusion aka.ms/a11y-scanner-resources
As AI speeds up development, accessibility must be built in from the start. This lightning talk highlights GitHub’s Accessibility Scanner and how it brings accessibility signals directly into developer workflows, alongside security and quality checks. We’ll also touch on the broader state of AI and Accessibility at Microsoft, focusing on how accessibility is being embedded into AI tooling and engineering practices so innovation scales inclusion.
