Authentic Inclusion (AI)

Her starting point is unflinching. People with a learning disability face deep inequalities across almost every part of life: from healthcare and employment to everyday services that most people now access online. Too many products, apps and systems are designed as if people with a learning disability do not exist.

When that happens, innovation quietly widens the gap instead of closing it.

Jackie has been using AI as a lens on that challenge. She is asking a simple question with big implications: how do we make sure the next wave of AI enabled services is built with people with a learning disability in mind from the very beginning, not patched afterwards?

https://vimeo.com/1143060144/a0a25ee268?fl=ip&fe=ec

From analogue fixes to changing how systems are built

Jackie’s instinct as an advocate was first to push for analogue workarounds. If online GP systems are confusing, you make sure there is a telephone number. If digital banking is inaccessible, you protect access to cash.

As she spent time with other Fellows, technologists and policy leaders, she began to see the risk in that mindset.

If the world moves on and the only people still using legacy systems are those with a learning disability, that is not inclusion. It is a two tier society.

That realisation has shifted Jackie’s focus from simply defending analogue access towards shaping how digital systems and AI are designed in the first place. She is looking for the language, levers and process points that influence how AI enabled services are built and governed.

AI as an accessibility tool, not just a risk

The Fellowship has opened up a different way of seeing AI for Mencap. Instead of being purely a source of risk, AI has become a set of tools that, if designed well, could directly remove barriers.

“AI offers the possibility to level up the change. Conversational user interface, voice activation, all of these things can be used by people with a learning disability to really put them on a much more level playing field.”

Examples include:

• Conversational user interfaces that remove the need to navigate complex menus

• Voice activation that reduces reliance on dense text and tiny buttons

• Systems that can adapt to a person’s needs, rather than expecting the person to adapt to rigid forms

Her first instinct was to turn to legislation. But AI is moving far faster than law making cycles.

“Legislation lags years behind where we really are with AI… So that clearly wasn’t the right option.”

Appealing purely to ethics, asking organisations to be inclusive because it is the right thing to do, also felt too fragile on its own. The breakthrough was reframing accessibility as part of a core value proposition.

Inclusive design is not a side project. It is a way to build better services for all users, open up new labour markets and strengthen trust.

A call to leaders working with AI

Jackie’s journey through the Forward Institute Fellowship has led to a clear challenge for leaders in any sector building AI enabled services:

• If your systems do not work for people with a learning disability, they do not genuinely work.

• If you design for people who are most often excluded, you end up with better services for everyone.

• There is a real business opportunity in making accessibility part of the core offer, not a compliance afterthought.

For Mencap, that insight now sits at the heart of its strategic vision. The next five years will be about turning it into practice, influencing government and industry, backing innovation and making sure AI is used to open doors, not quietly close them.