American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults
Future Reflections Special Issue on Technology EXPLORING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
AI and Our Blind Children: The Potential and the Pitfalls
by Jonathan Mosen
From the Editor: Jonathan Mosen serves as executive director for the Center for Accessibility Excellence of the National Federation of the Blind. Formerly host of the international podcast Living Blindfully, he now hosts the NFB’s weekly podcast Access On.
I am old enough to remember when the pocket calculator was a new and controversial piece of equipment. While some parents and educators expressed the view that students shouldn’t use calculators at all, others took a more nuanced perspective. They wisely observed that pocket calculators were here to stay. While people would always need to understand mathematical principles and know how to solve problems, banning pocket calculators would not promote problem-solving skills.
I have similar feelings about artificial intelligence (AI)—technology that is increasingly capable and transformative. When used prudently, AI can greatly assist us as blind persons. It can help us conduct research, enhance our writing, even explain visual concepts. There is no putting the genie back in the bottle. AI is here to stay.
In this article, I will cover some mainstream principles surrounding the ethical use of AI. I also will discuss some compelling uses for AI that are specific to blindness. Blind people now can use many accessible AI tools in their academic and personal lives. People are increasingly using services like Open AI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini (formerly Bard), and Microsoft Copilot to assist with tasks such as summarizing reading material, brainstorming ideas, generating outlines, and even producing full essays. Most of these services offer a free, basic version with limited functionality. You may want to subscribe to at least one of these services to unleash its full functionality and harness AI’s full potential. Premium access typically starts at around twenty dollars per month.
Gemini, ChatGPT and other AI services now offer “deep research” features. These features allow users to explore complex topics by collating multiple sources, offering layered perspectives on a single subject. If used correctly, this feature can be a gold mine for blind students conducting research for school projects, significantly reducing the need to navigate inaccessible websites.
Gemini has an exciting new audio summary feature that turns documents into podcast-style audio discussions. Blind learners who process information more effectively through audio, or those who feel text-to-speech is monotonous, may find this new way of engaging with content to be empowering. It allows students to absorb information in a conversational and engaging format, helping them retain and understand the material.
A free service from Google, NotebookLM, offers similar audio functionality. It allows a student to upload a large number of documents and have a podcast-style summary produced. For example, I uploaded every Presidential Report delivered by the current president of the National Federation of the Blind, Mark Riccobono, and the service produced a thought-provoking discussion about the Federation’s work.
However, AI has a downside that justifiably causes some parents to be wary. While these tools are powerful, they must be used wisely. Increasingly, schools are adopting tools that detect when students use AI to generate significant portions of assignments or even full essays. AI detectors such as GPTZero and Turnitin’s AI detection module are designed to spot work that lacks students’ unique voices or work that exhibits telltale signs of AI-generated writing. If students submit AI-written papers, they are likely to incur academic penalties. Students who use AI tools as academic shortcuts are unable to develop valuable skills that would undoubtedly benefit them professionally, beyond school.
Blind students face an additional risk. Because AI tools are often more accessible than other academic resources such as websites, blind students may be strongly tempted to use them exclusively. Here parental guidance can play a critical role. Parents should discourage students from using AI to replace critical reading, independent research, and expressive writing skills. These are not just academic abilities; they are life skills that blind people must develop in order to live the lives they want.
Experts agree that the best approach to using AI in education is guided, transparent, and supplemental. They suggest that parents encourage children to use AI as a brainstorming partner, not a ghostwriter. Here are a few suggestions:
- Encourage your child to generate their own ideas, then use AI to expand on those thoughts or suggest different ways to structure them.
- Verify facts independently. AI tools sometimes “hallucinate,” a fancy term meaning they occasionally make things up.
- Use AI to spark curiosity, but always check information with trustworthy sources.
- Encourage children to ask their teachers for guidance. Many educators now discuss how to use AI appropriately in their classes. It’s important for students to know, and follow, the rules.
- Everyone needs to find and develop their own voice. Encourage your child to write drafts themselves and then use AI to edit or critique their work. This method can help students refine their writing skills while benefiting from AI’s editorial suggestions.
- Reflect on what you have learned. After using AI, ask your child to summarize what they’ve learned or how they would explain the topic in their own words. This method reinforces understanding and personal connection to the material.
- Finally, teach transparency. Encourage your child to be up front when using AI to assist with a task. Integrity will serve us well in all aspects of life. For example, when I was researching this article, I used ChatGPT’s “Deep Research” to learn about best practices for integrating AI into a child’s education. Then I incorporated those details into this article, using my own style.
Beyond academics, AI is facilitating the roll-out of a new generation of accessibility tools with the potential to add immense value to blind people’s lives. Services such as Be My AI (from Be My Eyes) and Aira’s Access AI use Large Language Models (LLMs) to describe photos and visual scenes. These tools allow blind users to explore their environment independently, read printed materials, and understand visual content without needing to connect with a live agent.
JAWS PictureSmart, another AI-powered feature, enables users to get descriptions of images from within the JAWS screen reader. Graphs in textbooks, family photos, memes posted by classmates, and descriptions of people taking part in online meetings are all accessible because of artificial intelligence. These and similar tools can help blind children participate more fully in both academic and social contexts.
ChatGPT’s voice mode with video features also opens new possibilities. Blind students no longer have to wait for software to process pictures. Now, blind learners can hold math worksheets or science diagrams in front of the screen and ask the AI to describe them. The combination of conversational interaction and real-time visual analysis can transform the way blind children engage with visual learning. These innovations make tasks easier and promote curiosity. They allow blind children to ask, “What does this look like” and to explore the world more independently and confidently. As parents and educators, we should nurture students’ curiosity, help them learn how to ask good questions, and teach them to evaluate the answers they receive.
You can further appreciate the elements of the world that drive your child’s curiosity by allowing them to use AI tools alongside you. This strategy creates opportunities for discussion, learning, and bonding.
As AI becomes more embedded in our lives, digital literacy must include developing an understanding of how these tools work, their limitations, and their ethical implications. It’s crucial for blind children to grow up using AI and think about it critically.
It is a priority of the National Federation of the Blind Center of Excellence in Nonvisual Accessibility (CENA) to equip blind people with the knowledge they need to use AI tools effectively. Recently we presented a webinar that focused on prompt engineering—the art of crafting effective instructions for AI tools. You can find a summary of that discussion on our Access On podcast. We encourage families and educators to explore this resource and incorporate the insights into their learning routines.
Prompt engineering is especially powerful for blind users. Knowing how to ask the right questions can help students tailor AI’s output to meet their specific needs, whether they want summaries of news articles, visual descriptions of paintings, or help rewording tricky sentences in essays.
Ultimately, the goal is to raise children who are competent, thoughtful, ethical users of AI. AI is a remarkable tool, but it must not prevent children from developing their own voices, their own ways of understanding the world, and their own methods of communication.
For blind children in particular, AI has the power to level the playing field and to open doors that were previously shut or hard to access. It can help students learn faster, explore more freely, and participate more fully in school and in life. Like the calculator, AI can be a valuable tool, depending on how people choose to use it.
By guiding your child in responsible AI use, you’re helping them build a future in which they can think critically, act ethically, and communicate powerfully. In the end, that is what education is all about.