Ability Summit 2026
2026-05-19..2026-05-20
-- online --
who it's for
accessibility program managers, accessibility engineers, product managers, ux researchers, ai and ml engineers, developer tooling engineers, assistive technology specialists
topics
AI Skills Navigator; GitHub Accessibility Scanner; Windows Narrator improvements; Copilot document generation workflows; Voice Preservation dashboard; Xbox Adaptive controller toppers; Braille HID plug-and-play support; Copilot CLI blind-native video editor; Accessibility Assistant in Office; compliance at scale hub-and-spoke
| title | author | length |
|---|---|---|
| Keynote | Jenny Lay-Flurrie | 14m |
Remarks trace growth from 20 to 20,000 attendees across the 16th Ability Summit and list concrete accessibility wins: the adaptive controller, Seeing AI… | ||
| Keynote | Neil Barnett | 17m |
Microsoft reports that 200,000+ employees must take required accessibility training and treats compliance across 6,000 products as the floor, not the goal… | ||
| Keynote | Tobii Dynavox | 12m |
Announcement of a Voice Preservation Dashboard that stores phrases in OneDrive and puts voice banking ownership in users' hands while supporting about 2,000… | ||
| Keynote | Kavitha Radhakrishnan | 11m |
Microsoft launches the free AI Skills Navigator that aggregates Microsoft Learn, LinkedIn Learning, and GitHub into AI-generated, role-specific playlists and… | ||
| AI Skills Navigator | Natalie Worden-Cowe | 02m |
AI Skills Navigator asks learning preferences at registration and then matches modules to those styles, shows a live demo of a one-click podcast that creates… | ||
| Keynote | SPEAKER 1 | 22m |
Narrator now claims faster performance, Scan Mode and improved shortcuts, Copilot-powered image/graph descriptions, natural HD voices, and over 150 bug fixes… | ||
| Copilot | Dave Dame | 02m |
Live demo of Copilot plus Work IQ generates an executive report, a PowerPoint and a polished executive email from dictated prompts, producing a usable first… | ||
| Windows Narrator | Nidhi Jain | 02m |
Narrator aims to be the trustworthy, out of the box screen reader for Windows, with measurable work on faster performance and smoother navigation that improve… | ||
| Keynote | Ed Summers | 12m |
GitHub describes a free, open-source AI-powered accessibility scanner that uses Axe-core to find issues, files GitHub issues (six found in the demo), and… | ||
| GitHub Accessibility Scanner | Ed Summers | 05m |
GitHub unveils a free, open-source AI accessibility scanner integrated into repositories that uses axe-core and a new plugin architecture to find web barriers… | ||
| Keynote | James Hunter | 05m |
Xbox announces concrete accessibility updates: a free Xbox Adaptive Thumbstick Topper program (launched 2024) lets players download customizable 3D-printable… | ||
| Building NeuroInclusive Employee Experiences | Tarena Shanaberger | 01h 02m |
Organizations report concrete moves: a Central Accommodations Fund gives confidential access to 90+ success enablers via Retain by Inclusively; Slack adds a… | ||
| Fixing Accessibility After the Fact Is Already Too Late | Aaron Gustafson | 59m |
AI creates more code faster and replicates human accessibility mistakes because models train on messy open source; WebAIM shows homepages averaging ~56… | ||
| AI as a Force for Innovation | Anne Taylor | 01h 06m |
Conference session summarizes concrete tools and outcomes: Cfluent AI AAC integrates context prediction to cut AAC latency and preserve user agency in fast… | ||
| The Hub and Spoke Model for Compliance at Scale | ALLI HIRT | 47m |
Central hub teams create concrete rules, tooling and escalation paths while spokes implement and escalate: a one-person legal hub parachutes into product… | ||
| Becoming Frontier: Accessibility is the Next AI Advantage | LAURIE ALLEN | 53m |
Enterprise cases and numbers: a Honeywell study of 300 employees finds 76% say AI/Copilot is critical, and Honeywell builds a Copilot bot to generate alt text… | ||
| Keynote Sports Panel Discussion | FIFA World Cup Seattle | 25m |
Real-time captioning accuracy jumps from 91% to nearly 99% after a Microsoft partnership and weeks of tuning, a tactile broadcast tablet lets fans “feel”… | ||
| Mainstage Opening Session | Jenny Lay Flanagan | 02h 04m |
Nuts and bolts update: Microsoft launches a Voice Preservation dashboard that banks voices to OneDrive and ships Custom Voice integrations, supporting about… | ||
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