Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to develop accessibility standards for AI-enabled assistive communication technologies used by people with disabilities.

The Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations require most public sector organisations to ensure their services, websites, intranets, extranets, published documents, and apps are accessible to disabled people by meeting the requirements of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines v2.2 to level AA and by publishing a prescribed format accessibility statement. This includes requirements to work with assistive technologies. The regulations apply regardless of if the technology is AI enabled or not. The Government Service Standard requires Departments to make sure everyone can use the service. The standard doesn’t apply to the wider public sector.