Making AI Features Usable by Everyone on Your Team

Three AI-specific problems

1. Streaming output that re-announces on every token, making screen reader use unbearable
2. Confidence shown only by colour, invisible to colour-blind users
3. Dynamic regions that update without any announcement at all

None is hard to fix and all three are common, because they do not occur in conventional forms-and-tables software.

Getting streaming right

Use a polite live region and announce on completion rather than on every chunk. Sighted users get the streaming effect; screen reader users get a coherent sentence instead of a stutter.

Also provide a way to stop generation that is reachable by keyboard without leaving the output region.

Confidence needs more than colour

• A text label alongside any colour indicator
• An icon with a meaningful accessible name
• Contrast that meets the standard in both themes
• Sorting and filtering by confidence, not only visual scanning

Review interfaces must be keyboard-complete

This is both an accessibility requirement and the thing that makes review fast for everyone. Full keyboard operation, visible focus, logical order, and no action that requires a mouse.

It is the clearest case of accessibility work improving the product for all users rather than only for some.

Where the AI can help too

Generated alt text for images, plain-language summaries of dense documents, and readability checks on outgoing content. These are genuinely useful applications, provided a person confirms the alt text before it ships.

Automatically generated alt text that is wrong is worse than none, because it sounds authoritative.

Frequently asked questions