With support from Dr. Nachiketa Tiwari, Professor and Head of the Department, as well as Assistant Professor Dr. Amar Behera from Department of Design, IIT Kanpur, we came up an experiment to conduct the first of its kind in-person design thinking session where AI would be a facilitator and participant. On March 19th, 2024, we ran this workshop with 20 students. This was First-ever AI Facilitated In-Person Design Thinking Session ever conducted in the country.

Since a long time prior to this workshop, I have been exploring with some of the custom-tuned models to explore the possibility of creating a non-evasive approach to integrate AI into In-person Design Thinking sessions, and creating a collection of tools clubbed under a name "CoSpace" - meaning tools for collaborative space for human-AI interaction. However this collaboration is not expected for in virtual white board, rather the approach was a baby step towards AI collaborating with human participants in a physical space during Design Thinking sessions.

The following demos were showcased:

• Writing alt text for images through AI
• Interpreting charts and graphs and providing summary through AI
• And providing transcription for multimedia content through AI.
• He demonstrated these capabilities using OPEN AI, Vision AI and NLP models.

In today’s digital age, accessibility is not just a nice-to-have feature; it’s a fundamental necessity. However, despite significant progress, many digital platforms still pose barriers to individuals with disabilities. a study by WebAIM (Web Accessibility in Mind) in 2020 found that 97.4% of the top 1 million homepages had detectable WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) failures. Another study by the Bureau of Internet Accessibility (BoIA) in 2019 found that 98% of homepages failed to meet WCAG standards. These studies highlight the widespread nature of accessibility challenges on the web. Fortunately, advancements in AI offer promising solutions to address these challenges and create more inclusive experiences for all users. This talk aims to explore how AI-powered solutions can revolutionize accessibility by identifying common barriers and offering innovative fixes. By leveraging AI technologies, we can fix existing accessibility challenges in real time with lower upfront cost thereby making the internet truly inclusive and accessible to everyone.