Accessibility is not a “nice to have” add-on to the economy. It is consumer protection, civil rights, and a growth strategy, and it only becomes real when disabled people are in the rooms where power is exercised. We’re joined by Katrin Langensiepen, a Greens Member of the European Parliament, to talk candidly about what disability representation looks like inside EU policymaking, and how easily the media and the public can reduce a disabled politician to a single topic even when the work spans internal market regulation, social affairs, and equality.

We also get honest about intersectionality and why some people resist the word. Disability never shows up alone: it intersects with gender, migration, race, poverty, and sexuality, and ignoring that reality leaves the most marginalised people behind. Katrin and our hosts explore how ableism shapes fear, how “inspiration” framing can still be dehumanising, and how far-right narratives can pretend to be on disabled people’s side while blaming migrants and refugees for scarcity. That strategy works when communities are made to feel they must compete for dignity.

From there, we shift to the European Accessibility Act and what enforcement really takes. EU accessibility law can set a powerful umbrella standard, but member states control implementation, monitoring, and penalties, which can mean delays, half-measures, and court battles. We connect the dots to AI regulation and assistive technology: AI can close gaps for disabled people, but it can also automate discrimination in hiring and services unless rules protect human rights. We close with a practical lever that often gets overlooked: procurement power, and why buying standards can move markets faster than good intentions.

If you care about disability rights, EU accessibility, inclusive tech, and AI governance, listen now, share this with someone who works in policy or product, and subscribe and leave a review with one accessibility change you want enforced next.

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Your inbox is where productivity goes to die, especially when the tools assume you can constantly scan a screen, hunt for tiny buttons, and triple-check every draft. We sit down with Sriram, founder of Lumin, to unpack what happens when an AI voice assistant is built for blind and low vision users first and held to a higher standard: it has to be accurate enough to trust, fast enough to use daily, and deep enough to handle real email workflows instead of shallow commands.

Sriram shares his journey from video game engineering and immersive tech to entrepreneurship, then the turning point of progressive vision loss from cone rod dystrophy. That lived experience shapes Lumin’s core idea: “talk to your email” in a way that actually gets work done. You’ll hear a live demo where Lumin summarizes new mail, opens a message, describes a photo attachment clearly for social media, drafts a reply, takes an edit, and sends only after confirmation. The conversation digs into why this kind of AI productivity tool is fundamentally different from generic chat apps and why handling attachments, revisions, and back-and-forth is where most assistants break down.

We also get concrete about accessibility and inclusive design: co-design with Lighthouse for the Blind, screen reader support, robust text zoom, and a simplified interface that keeps power in voice commands. Then we look ahead at the product roadmap, including Outlook and calendar support, plus the longer-term vision of meeting users on more devices like Android, smart glasses, and eventually cars. Finally, we tackle AI trust and privacy head-on: clear disclosure of cloud providers, visibility into what Lumin remembers, and user control including account deletion.

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AI is rewriting job descriptions, regulators are getting sharper, and accessibility teams are being asked to prove value faster than ever. So we put Neil Milliken in the spotlight to talk about his leap from leading global accessibility at Atos to founding Thrival Holdings, a boutique consultancy built around one simple idea: help organisations create the conditions where people thrive, not just survive.

We dig into how AI in accessibility is changing the work without replacing the need for specialists. Neil breaks down why the future looks less like one-person “expert bottlenecks” and more like scalable accessibility governance: embedding accessibility knowledge into design and engineering workflows, using tools responsibly, and backing it all with regression testing so quality does not drift as models and codebases evolve. We also talk candidly about what happens to collaboration when companies downsize and people feel they must protect individual value.

Then we zoom out to the policy and business side: the European Accessibility Act, real enforcement signals like French rulings that challenge misleading “percentage accessible” scores, and why compliance timelines rarely flip like a switch. We connect accessibility to ESG and sustainability by treating exclusion like pollution, a framing that helps leaders understand negative externalities, the curb cut effect, and the ROI of inclusive design across procurement, risk management, and reporting.

If you care about digital accessibility, WCAG, disability inclusion, and building programs that last through AI and regulatory change, this conversation will give you language and strategy you can use immediately. Subscribe, share the episode with a colleague, and leave a review with the one metric you think would finally make accessibility non-negotiable.

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