AI accessibility: Use India’s AI Summit to define it clearly and set a mandate for the world to adopt
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. As the world approaches the India AI Summit 2026 , the conversation on AI has evolved beyond algorithmic efficiency to encompass the more significant issues of digital sovereignty and ethics. A critical legal and ethical gap needs to be plugged: the definition of ‘AI accessibility.’ In India, the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (RPwD) Act of 2016 provides a robust legal framework for persons with disabilities (PwDs).
But it defines accessibility primarily in negative terms, with a ‘barrier’ taken as its denial. To ensure that “AI for All," the central theme of this year’s summit, becomes more than a slogan, we must construct a three-tiered definition of AI accessibility rooted in legal and disability jurisprudence. The definitional gap: Under the RPwD Act, a ‘barrier’ is defined broadly as any factor , be it “communicational, cultural, economic, environmental, institutional, political, social, attitudinal or structural," that hampers the full participation of PwDs.
By extension, Indian law has treated accessibility as the mere absence of these obstacles. But AI is not a static physical structure like a ramp. It is a recursive form of software that evolves.
If the summit is to set a global benchmark, it must go beyond calls to remove barriers and mandate what AI needs to be from its very inception. For AI, accessibility must be understood as a spectrum of time and utility, operating at three distinct levels. First, instant stage accessibility: This is an entry threshold that covers basic requirements for participation.
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