Unequal Voices: Disability, Communication, and Justice in AI

Artificial intelligence is no longer confined to research labs or technical infrastructure—it is embedded in classrooms, creative practice, healthcare systems, communication platforms, and planetary-scale infrastructures. As AI systems move from experimental tools to everyday companions, decision-makers, and mediators of social life, the question is no longer whether AI will shape our future, but how—and by whom.

At the Design Lab, we approach AI not simply as an algorithmic achievement, but as a fundamentally human-centered design challenge. Intelligent systems must be technically robust, yet responsive to lived experience; powerful at scale, yet grounded in context; innovative, yet attentive to equity and responsibility. Across seven sessions, Design@Large in Spring 2026 brings together leading voices from research, industry, education, law, health, and the arts to explore how AI is designed, deployed, governed, and experienced in real-world settings. From generative AI in education and music to embodied intelligence in XR, from disability justice and communication to sustainable computing and Indigenous data sovereignty, and from personal AI companions to value-based care in health systems, the series examines AI where it meets people, institutions, and infrastructures.

Rather than treating AI as a purely technical system, we frame it as a site of negotiation among human values, institutional incentives, cultural norms, and material conditions. Each session pairs scholars, practitioners, and industry leaders to interrogate how design decisions shape agency, creativity, trust, access, and care at scale.

Design@Large is open to the broader public and livestreamed online, while also serving as a core seminar for over 100 undergraduate and graduate students at UC San Diego. Together, we ask: What does it mean to design AI responsibly? How do we ensure that intelligent systems amplify human capability without reproducing harm? And how can design guide AI toward more just, inclusive, and sustainable futures?

AI systems mediate communication at massive scale—but not all voices are heard, represented, or valued equally. Centering disability as expertise, this session explores how communication technologies embed normative assumptions about language, cognition, and ability. Bringing together accessible computing, assistive technology practice, and critical disability scholarship, the discussion moves beyond usability to justice—asking how AI can expand participation without reproducing structural inequities.

Anne Marie Piper is a Professor in the Department of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine. Her research in human-computer interaction and accessible computing aims to create more equitable and inclusive digital experiences for people of all ages and abilities. Anne Marie’s prior and ongoing work focuses on designing new technologies for collaborative work among ability-diverse teams of professionals and academics; developing accessible content production tools for artists, writers, and musicians who are blind; and leveraging the arts as a form of expression and resource for designing alongside people with dementia or speech-language impairments. Her research is funded by NSF, including a CAREER award, the Mellon Foundation, and Microsoft, and has been recognized with numerous Best Paper Awards and Nominations at ACM CHI, CSCW, DIS, and ASSETS. Anne Marie earned her PhD in Cognitive Science from the University of California, San Diego, MA in Education from Stanford University, and BS in Computer Science from Georgia Tech. Prior to joining UC-Irvine, she was a tenured faculty member at Northwestern University.

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