After a long winter, spring reminds us that brighter days are ahead. At AFB, your support helps ensure that people who are blind or low vision have the tools, research, and opportunities they need to thrive. Your gift helps build a more accessible world.
Give Today
Purple flowers in bloom with a sunset on the horizon behind them.

The AI Quagmire

Benefits, Risks, and Aspirations Through a Disability Lens

The AI Quagmire Research Report Cover

Research Report | March 2026

Artificial intelligence is infiltrating all aspects of our lives shaping how people learn, work, communicate, and access essential services. For people with disabilities, including those who are blind or have low vision, AI promises the moon: enabling access to information across formats, supporting independence, and reducing longstanding barriers. At the same time, the expansion of AI introduces new and often poorly understood risks, including its own inaccessible design features, biased decision-making, privacy concerns, and overreliance on systems that may not yet be accurate or equitable.

The findings from AFB’s national survey of AI users with and without disabilities highlight a central tension: AI is both a powerful accessibility tool and a source of emerging inequities. Participants reported widespread adoption of AI, meaningful benefits in communication and productivity, and strong interest in further skill development. Yet they also described persistent accessibility barriers, challenges in high-stakes contexts such as employment and healthcare, and a clear preference for human interaction when privacy is at stake.

This report, The AI Quagmire: Benefits, Risks, and Aspirations Through a Disability Lens, shares AFB’s analysis of current usage trends, which can be used by developers, employers, educators, policymakers, and users themselves. We invite you to join us in leveraging this data to make intentional design choices, rigorous evaluation of AI tools, and shared accountability to ensure that AI expands access rather than deepens disparities.

Read the Report Online

Download the Report

Screen Reader Tip: The complete AI Quagmire Report is greater than 50 pages in length, and Acrobat, by default, will only load one page at a time for longer documents. In a longer document, you can use Ctrl + Page Up or Page Down to navigate from page to page.

Download the AI Quagmire Report

Download the Executive Summary

If you have any questions, please get in touch with our Public Policy and Research Institute at research@afb.org.

AFB Webinar

Join us on Wednesday, March 25 at noon ET for a webinar featuring guest speaker Maitreya Shah, Technology Director at the American Association of People with Disabilities. Together, we’ll discuss what the results from this report, The AI Quagmire, reveal about the disability community’s trust in AI, what they could mean for developers, deployers, and policymakers, how the disability community’s perspectives should shape the future of AI design and governance, and the key research questions that still need answers.

Learn More   Register for the Webinar

Publication Details

Authors:

Arielle M. Silverman, Ph.D. | Angie L. Whistler, M.S.Ed. | Alyssa Shock, PsyD. | Carmel H. Heydarian, M.S. | Sarahelizabeth J. Baguhn, Ph.D. | William E. Hanuschock, III, M.Ed. | Mana Hashimoto, M.A. | Omar Khan, B.S. | Mei-Lian Vader, M.S.

Language Note:

In this report, we have used both person-first language (“people with disabilities”) and identity-first language (“disabled people”) when describing disability. This is an intentional choice meant to honor differing preferences within the broader disability community, an approach supported in research literature (e.g., Dunn & Andrews, 2015). In addition, we have used identity-first terms when specifically describing three disabilities: “BLV people” meaning blind and low-vision people; “D/HH people” meaning deaf/Deaf and hard-of-hearing people; and “autistic people.” This choice reflects the strong preference for identity-first language voiced by many members of these particular communities.

Acknowledgements:

We thank Sarah Malaier and Stephanie Enyart for developing the recommendations at the end of this report and for offering feedback on earlier drafts. We are also grateful to the working group of 19 disability organizations whose input shaped the survey questions and design.

Suggested Citation:

Silverman, A. M., Whistler, A. L., Shock, A., Heydarian, C. H., Baguhn, S. J., Hanuschock, W. E., Hashimoto, A., Khan, O., & Vader, M-L. (2026). The AI Quagmire: Benefits, Risks, and User Aspirations Through a Disability Lens. American Foundation for the Blind.

Image Credit:

Disability-inclusive stock photography courtesy of Disability:IN. Photographs by Jordan Nicholson. Used under the Creative Commons Attribution–NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Funding Acknowledgment:

We thank the Ford Foundation for supporting American Foundation for the Blind’s efforts on AI and workplace technology to ensure equal rights for people with disabilities.