Ruth H

It's on the AxeCon website you have to register to watch the recording. Very good talk 😀

Plan to scrap many jury trials in England and Wales despite criticism The government has set out its plan to reduce the backlog of court cases, which stands at some 80,000 criminal cases.

Plan to scrap many jury trials in England and Wales despite criticism

www.channel4.com/news/plan-to...

yes they actively disable people. We just ignore so much. Like the people mining minerals for our tech whose health and bodies can be permanently affected from the labour and don't even benefit from the tech.

Technology is not unbiased, and it is willfully obtuse to pretend that tools to "help" disabled and neurodivergent people will in fact be weaponized against us. Already has been.

It's irresponsible to pretend it is neutral and objective.

When talking about AI for accessibility surely we should also be considering the environmental impact on disabled people globally, many of whom don't have digital access? We know climate change disproportionately affects disabled people, who can't easily get evacuated and is also disabling #AxeCon

"Many of our designs are built around the idea of a normal or average user, but an average user is a fiction. No human body or mind is an average. " 1/2 @annaecook.com #axecon

Not every product needs AI, but every product needd accessibility.

And important message after the previous two #AxeCon talks!

Lovely talk from @annaecook.com at #AxeCon. I wanna broadcast it across our internal design channels, or really everywhere. Repeatedly. I wish for all those great messages to percolate gently into everyone's psyche. *sigh* 👏 💙

Sadly not this time!

Definitely a palate cleanser

@geekgalgroks.bsky.social did you catch Anna's talk? Right on point.

Also so much on AI training people with autism to mask.

Which I think is just horrible.

Masking is draining, sure glasses that "teach" you to look at faces looks great, but it is still MASKING.

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www.deque.com/axe-con/sess... #AxeCon

You can find David Sabaté's talk: Let me enjoy the show! Accessibility in event platforms on the AxeCon 2026 website to watch for free, although registration is required. #AxeCon

Incredibly practical and useful talk from David Sabaté from TOTHOM about digital accessibility when booking tickets for the theatre, football or a gig.

We journeyed with three disabled people trying access the poster on social media, to choose a seat and use the calendar - so many barriers #AxeCon

I suspect you will love it. It's not digital focused at all, but the development of theory and seeing disabled people as designer actors in their own lives is so powerful. I actually came across it thanks to the Design and Disability Exhibition at the Victoria and Albert!

^ is chaos

A few more excellent insights from my notes from @annaecook.com's #AxeCon talk
- You can't patch clarity
- Needs come before knowing why (diagnosises etc)
- Personalisation without structure are chaos
- LLM's are trained on the web as it is, not how we wish it were, they inherit accessibility debt.

oops solution!

@annaecook.com your mention of affordances in your talk made me think of fantastic disability studies ethnography book called Activism Affordances by Arseli Dokumacı about how disabled people improvise more habitable worlds and it explores affordances of disability bodies. It's fascinating. #AxeCon

Not every product needs AI, but every product needd accessibility.

And important message after the previous two #AxeCon talks!

Technology decisions are not neutral says @annaecook.com #AxeCon. Is AI actively solving a problem or are we designing a problem that needs a soltuon? AI without consent is not personalisation, it's coercion. AI didn't end determinism, it exposed it.

you are going to have a very receptive audience.

This app knows how you feel -- from the look on your face Our emotions influence every aspect of our lives -- how we learn, how we communicate, how we make decisions. Yet they're absent from our digital lives; the devices and apps we interact with have no wa...

www.ted.com/talks/rana_e... it's infuriating and also her whole scenario at the beginning about not telling her family she was struggling when studying abroad was really sad. Like the solution isn't tech surveilling emotions, it's open and honest communication, hearing loved one's voice or video etc

I saw a TED talk demo where she shows how it 'recognise' emotions by asking an audience member to smile and then look sad or angry or something. So she literally shows it is not recognising emotions, because the person wasn't feeling those things, she just asked them to make an expression!

When talking about AI for accessibility surely we should also be considering the environmental impact on disabled people globally, many of whom don't have digital access? We know climate change disproportionately affects disabled people, who can't easily get evacuated and is also disabling #AxeCon

I am pretty sure I wrote a whole argument against some of her emotion 'recognising' work in a uni assignment about how it is coercive 'power-over'. What scares me is she seems so far inside her own BS and no idea she is perpetuating harm, thinks she is preaching ethics!

you can imagine the chat comments.

She kept talking about ethics whilst describing unethical things.