Building an inclusive digital future: Lessons from the digital accessibility movement for the AI Impact Summit 2026

While this was not always the case, India’s digital accessibility journey is increasingly a story of collaboration between disability rights groups, responsive regulators, and a growing number of tech companies that are willing to listen and change. In this piece, we explore how the learnings from this journey are relevant to the explorations and outcomes of the Working Group on Inclusion for Social Empowerment, in the AI Impact Summit 2026. The AI Impact Summit 2026 is a flagship gathering to be hosted on February 19 and 20, 2025, under the aegis of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). The Summit aims to bring together international policymakers, industry leaders, researchers, startups and civil-society actors to chart a path where the transformative impact of AI serves humanity, advances inclusive growth, and promotes people-centric innovations that protect our planet.

 Digital accessibility as a key piece in India’s USD 1 trillion digital economy trajectory:

India's digital economy is poised to hit USD 1 trillion by 2030, a reality which cannot come to fruition if digital accessibility remains an afterthought instead of a baseline design principle. Between 2.2 percent of Indians as per official surveys live with disabilities, translating into tens of millions of potential users, workers, and entrepreneurs who are currently under-served by inaccessible platforms and services. As internet use inches closere to 900 million people in India and digital payments, e-commerce, and online public services become the primary rails of growth, excluding such a large population is both an economic loss and a rights violation. The emerging Purple Economy movement, led by EnAble India, reframes disability inclusion as a growth strategy rather than a welfare issue. Early estimates suggest that the spending power of people with disabilities in India could be approximately USD 150 billion, and that failing to value their participation can shavespend 5–10 percent off GDP through lost productivity, innovation, and consumption. By treating accessibility as core infrastructure for digital products and services, and not a bolt-on feature, India can unlock this “purple” demand and talent pool as a serious driver of its digital economy.

Yet, current digital accessibility levels show how much work remains. Government data and independent reviews indicate that only a fraction of public websites and apps meet accessibility norms, with just around 95 central government websites and a small share of state portals fully accessible. Many private services also fail to align with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), or Indian standards despite legal mandates and audit deadlines. In sectors like banking and finance, accessibility audits highlight that most players are still at an early stage of compliance, even though over 2.7 crore Indians with disabilities depend on these services to participate in the formal economy. This gap can be closed through enforceable standards, incentives, and co-design with disabled users.

 How digital accessibility is standardised and implemented:

 Under international benchmarks such as the WCAG, digital accessibility means that content and interfaces are perceivable, operable, understandable and robust for people with diverse disabilities, including visual, auditory, motor, cognitive and neurological disabilities. Concretely, this translates to practices like proper semantic structure, keyboard navigation, text alternatives, captions, sufficient colour contrast, predictable interactions and compatibility with assistive technologies.

1.  Accessibility standards in India and globally: In India, the IS 17802:2023 on “Accessibility for ICT Products and Services” was notified under Rule 15, aligning Indian practice with global standards such as WCAG 2.1 and the European EN 301 549 framework. At the same time, the Guidelines for Indian Government Websites 3.0 (GIGW) require government sites to follow at least WCAG 2.1 principles. The WCAG guidelines apply to AI in two ways: These principles apply to AI in two ways: AI-powered interfaces must themselves meet WCAG, and AI-generated content must remain accessible over time.[1] The graphic below explores the application of the WCAG 2.1 to AI in apps and platforms:[2]

2.  Indian law: India’s legal backbone for digital accessibility lies in the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016 (RPwD Act) and Rights of Persons with Disabilities Rules 2017 (RPwD Rules). Together, they mandate accessibility in information and communication technology (ICT), including private platforms offering services to the public. The RPwD Act and Rules require “reasonable accommodation” and mandating that ICT products, websites and public documents be accessible in line with notified standards such as IS 17802:2023 and GIGW. GIGW embeds WCAG‑consistent checkpoints into the lifecycle of government websites, from design and development through testing and maintenance. This ensures that accessibility is treated as an ongoing responsibility rather than a one‑time compliance exercise.

How digital accessibility has evolved to a legal imperative through civil society engagement:

Groups such as Mission Accessibility have combined strategic litigation, regulatory engagement and hands‑on audits to push digital accessibility from the margins into the mainstream of India’s disability rights discourse. Their work has included landmark complaints on inaccessible apps and media, public campaigns highlighting everyday exclusion on popular platforms, and constructive partnerships with companies willing to redesign with disabled users in the room. Through their advocacy and strategic litigations, there is a growing recognition that digital access is a rights issue.

1. Court of the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities (CCPD): A much‑cited example is the complaint against the Practo app, where blind users challenged unlabelled buttons and inaccessible flows before the CCPD, arguing that this effectively shuts them out of digital health services. The case helped clarify that private IT service providers cannot treat accessibility as optional, and that accessibility duties flow from the RPwD Act and RPwD Rules, even when the provider is not a government entity. In July 2024, the CCPD notified government departments and several technology platforms of their non‑compliance with accessibility guidelines.

2. The Courts: Recent jurisprudence has sharpened the constitutional stakes by linking digital accessibility to Article 21’s guarantee of life and personal liberty. In the Rajive Raturi v. Union of India (2024) case on accessibility, the Supreme Court directed the Union Government to define mandatory, enforceable accessibility standards with clear timelines, effectively pushing the ecosystem toward a non‑negotiable floor of accessibility rather than a patchwork of voluntary practices. Further, the Supreme Court has in the case of Pragya Prasun & Ors. v. Union of India (April 2025) also directed that digital KYC processes must offer accessible alternatives when liveness checks or biometric steps exclude persons with disabilities.  

3. Legal imperative with regulators that are starting to bite: Subsequent regulatory moves reflect that digital accessibility is now framed as a legal and social imperative, not a matter of discretion. There have been sectoral directions from the Reserve Bank of India banks to make their digital services accessible for people with disabilities (in October 2024), with the Department of Financial Services releasing similar guidelines for the insurance sector.

•  The Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (DEPwD) anchors the Accessible India Campaign, which explicitly includes targets on making public documents, websites and audiovisual media compliant with internationally recognised accessibility standards. Over the past few years, DEPwD has nudged other ministries and regulators to adopt sector‑specific accessibility guidelines, including for civil aviation and financial services, signalling that ICT accessibility is a cross‑cutting obligation rather than a niche concern. The DEPwD along with NALSAR University of Law’s Centre for Disability Studies, has also released guidelines for public consultation to set out clear digital accessibility standards for private companies.
•  In July 2024, the CCPD directed a broad set of public and private establishments to have their websites and apps audited by experts certified by the International Association of Accessibility Professionals, warning of fines for non‑compliance under the RPwD Act and Rules.
•  Additionally, the Standardisation Testing and Quality Certification Directorate (STQC), under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) also offers a certification as a “Certified Quality Website (CQW)”, where websites and platforms must show they comply with GIGW. The certification is a recognition of the website’s compliance with GIGW and that the organisation has adequate processes for providing reliable and dependable service and information.

Industry learning to listen and co‑design

Against this backdrop, companies like Urban Company illustrate how compliance pressure, market logic, and civil society engagement can align in favour of accessibility. In 2024, Urban Company rolled out major accessibility upgrades to its app so that visually impaired consumers could reliably browse and book at‑home services using screen readers and touch gestures, explicitly positioning this as part of “democratising convenience for all.” These changes did not emerge in a vacuum - the company worked closely with Mission Accessibility, a disability rights collective, to identify real barriers and co‑design solutions for blind users. By engaging Mission Accessibility to test flows, flag barriers and iterate on fixes, Urban Company showed that co‑design with disabled users can be integrated into mainstream product roadmaps rather than tacked on at the end.

This collaboration is emblematic of a growing shift where accessibility is treated less as a charitable add‑on, and more as a core part of product quality and market reach in India’s digital economy. When platforms improve labelling, navigation, error messages and payment flows for blind and low‑vision users, they also make experiences smoother for older users, people with low literacy and those on patchy networks.

Similar patterns are emerging across finance, mobility, media and e‑commerce, where companies face a mix of formal notices from the CCPD, reputational pressure from user campaigns[3] and concrete guidance from accessibility experts[4] on how to meet standards like WCAG in mobile contexts. Done well, this collaboration not only averts legal risk but also unlocks new user segments and builds loyalty in a market where word‑of‑mouth within disability communities is powerful.

Companies such as BarrierBreak and Deque Systems support companies in their journey towards digital accessibility, including for AI powered solutions.

A call to build co‑designed, accountable tech

The Urban Company–Mission Accessibility example, the CCPD’s assertive orders and various government departments/bodies setting and enforcing standards, point to a replicable model: co‑design with people with disabilities, or indeed in any traditionally marginalised user, anchored in enforceable standards and backed by regulators willing to act. Key elements to encouraging this model of co-design include:

1.    Embedding accessibility requirements into procurement and licensing,

2.    Mandating periodic accessibility audits,

3.    Funding assistive innovation,

4.   Creating open, transparent channels for disabled users to report barriers and shape fixes.

5.   Recognising civil society organisations as equal partners, resourced to conduct research, test products, participate in standards bodies and sit at the table when regulatory frameworks for emerging technologies are drafted.

As India races ahead on AI adoption, wearable health devices, digital public infrastructure and sectoral tech platforms, the model forged in the digital accessibility arena offers a template for inclusive innovation. AI‑powered services, whether in education, credit scoring, tele‑medicine or government benefits, can easily reproduce or amplify exclusion if they rely on interfaces, data or assumptions that ignore disabled users’ realities.

Designing AI systems, wearables and smart city platforms with accessibility at the core means involving persons with disabilities and their representative organisations at every stage: problem framing, data collection, interface design, testing and post‑deployment monitoring. It also requires accessibility‑aware impact assessments that explicitly ask whether a technology is expanding or restricting access for disabled people, and that mandate corrective action when harms or barriers are identified.

Why this matters for the AI Impact Summit 2026

All of this makes India’s model of driving digital accessibility, a timely anchor for the upcoming AI Impact Summit 2026, especially for its working group on Inclusion for Social Empowerment. The Summit has an opportunity to treat India’s digital accessibility journey as a living laboratory for building inclusive AI, leveraging AI to enable inclusion to technology and real-life services, products, premises, and governance to ensure inclusive AI. The working group can draw on these experiences to propose concrete commitments such as:

1.   Requiring accessibility‑centred impact assessments for AI deployments;

2.   Integrating WCAG‑aligned and RPwD‑aligned criteria into AI procurement; and

3. Institutionalising co‑design with disabled people across the lifecycle of high‑impact technologies.

If the Summit can mainstream this model, India’s story on digital accessibility will not just be about fixing websites and apps, but about reshaping the very way technologies are imagined, built, deployed, and governed; so that inclusion is a design choice, not an afterthought.

Author credits: This blog has been authored by Shambhavi Ravishankar (Counsel) with inputs from Rutuja Pol, Partner.

Image credits:  Pixabay

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