Technology is changing the way we work. For people with disabilities, it can do something even more significant: remove barriers that have kept qualified people from participating fully in the workforce.

That was the focus of the inaugural Accessibility in the News conversation from Peaces of Me Foundation. Moderated by Peaces President and Co-Founder Daniel Hodges, the discussion brought together Dr. Arielle Silverman, Director of Research for the American Foundation for the Blind; accessibility strategist Angela Fowler; and nonprofit and business leader David James Dunworth.

The starting point was a recent study examining deaf and hard-of-hearing food delivery drivers in China. Researchers looked at technology designed to help drivers communicate with customers through tools such as text-to-speech. The results suggest that technology can substantially reduce the wage gap between workers with and without disabilities.

But the conversation quickly moved beyond one study or one piece of technology. It raised a larger question: How much of what we perceive as disability is actually the result of an inaccessible environment?

Capability Is Not the Same as Access

People with disabilities continue to face significant disparities in employment. As Dr. Silverman explained, working-aged adults with disabilities are substantially less likely to be employed than their nondisabled peers. Those disparities have persisted despite decades of legal protections against disability discrimination.

Part of the problem is that employers may confuse the way a task is normally performed with the ability to perform the task at all.

Dr. Silverman recalled encountering a research job posting that required applicants to be able to see well enough to read data. As a blind researcher, she immediately recognized the flaw in that requirement. She could read and analyze the data using a screen reader or Braille.

“Being able to see is only one way of getting information,” she explained.

That distinction matters. A disability may prevent someone from completing a task in the conventional way, without preventing the person from completing the task.

Technology can bridge that gap.

Screen readers translate information displayed visually on a computer into speech or Braille. Speech-to-text technology can translate spoken information for someone who cannot hear it. Text-to-speech can allow someone who does not communicate through spoken language to communicate with someone who does.

In the study discussed by the panel, that bridge addressed a practical problem for deaf and hard-of-hearing delivery drivers: communicating with customers while completing deliveries.

The lesson is not simply that technology is useful. It is that many barriers become solvable when we stop defining the problem as something being wrong with the person.

“If we frame disability in terms of access gaps,” Fowler said, “then that becomes a solvable problem.”

Solving the Right Problem

Technology, however, is not automatically synonymous with accessibility.

Sometimes designers become so focused on what technology can do that they fail to ask whether they are solving a problem disabled people actually have.

Dr. Silverman pointed to repeated attempts to create high-tech “smart canes” for blind people. These devices may incorporate sonar, computer vision, artificial intelligence or other sophisticated features. Yet the traditional white cane is inexpensive, reliable and extremely effective at providing the information blind travelers need.

A technologically impressive solution is not necessarily a better solution.

The same issue has arisen with attempts to create gloves that automatically translate sign language. The idea may sound straightforward to someone unfamiliar with sign language, but signed languages incorporate context, facial expressions, body movement and other information that cannot necessarily be captured by detecting hand movements alone.

Both examples demonstrate why disabled people need to be involved before a product is built, not merely invited to test it afterward.

Designers and researchers should begin by asking disabled people what barriers they encounter, what solutions already exist and where genuine gaps remain. Disability organizations can provide connections to people with lived experience, but that outreach needs to happen during conceptualization.

Otherwise, organizations risk investing substantial time and money into solving the wrong problem.

Technology Still Needs Humans

Artificial intelligence adds enormous potential to this conversation. It can describe visual information, translate speech into text, generate text from speech and help people interact with information in ways that were difficult or impossible only a few years ago.

But AI does not eliminate the need for human expertise.

“AI is a great thing, but it’s only as good as the training,” Fowler said. It must be directed and supervised by people who understand the problem it is supposed to solve.

That principle extends beyond AI. Accessibility works best when technology, human knowledge and lived experience work together.

For employers, this requires another shift in thinking. Hiring a person with a disability does not mean lowering standards.

Dr. Silverman noted that the Americans with Disabilities Act requires reasonable accommodations that give qualified employees an opportunity to perform their jobs. It does not require employers to accept poor performance simply because an employee has a disability.

The goal is not a lower bar. The goal is access to the same bar.

Mr. Dunworth, who has hired employees with disabilities during his career, argued that fear and lack of knowledge often prevent employers from recognizing that distinction. Employers may imagine accommodation will be expensive, productivity will decline or disability will fundamentally change the workplace.

Those assumptions can eliminate qualified candidates before employers ever discover what they can do.

Accessibility itself is often subject to the same misconceptions. Organizations may assume removing barriers will be prohibitively expensive or that every accessibility issue must be corrected immediately.

That is not always the case.

Ms. Fowler advocated a practical approach: address the barriers with the greatest impact, identify issues that can be corrected quickly, create a plan for remaining work and provide alternatives while longer-term barriers are being addressed.

Progress begins by understanding the problem rather than being afraid of it.

Suspend Your Disbelief

The panelists approached disability employment from different professional and personal perspectives, but their conclusions repeatedly converged on one idea: opportunity begins when assumptions stop making decisions for us.

For Ms. Fowler, years of encountering accessibility barriers led to a decision to work on solutions rather than to simply become angry at the problems.

“Most people want to do the right thing,” she said. “They just don’t know what the right thing is.”

Dr. Silverman emphasized that many of the forces keeping disabled people out of employment are preventable. People deserve opportunities to work, volunteer and contribute to their communities, and barriers that can be removed should be removed.

Mr. Dunworth challenged employers and disabled job seekers alike to learn, build skills and reconsider assumptions about what is possible.

Their final recommendations were strikingly simple. Read books and blogs written by disabled people. Learn about lives different from your own. Employers should educate themselves about accommodation and capability. Disabled job seekers should continue developing their skills and confidence.

And perhaps most importantly, Fowler offered a challenge that applies far beyond employment:

“Suspend your disbelief.”

When you encounter a task you assume a person with a disability cannot do, leave room for the possibility that you are wrong.

Because the barrier you see may not be a lack of ability.

It may simply be a gap in access.

And gaps can be closed.