Media Diversity Institute

Artificial intelligence can now describe an image to a blind journalist, read a screen, review a design and search thousands of documents. Yet a disabled journalist may still be unable to reach the studio because the lift is broken, publish a story because a button has no accessible name, or convince an editor that the tool is assisting rather than replacing them. The limit may no longer be what technology can do, but what the institution can imagine. 

An in-depth report by Ahmad Manenah 

Throughout my years in journalism, I developed a small habit that was also slightly embarrassing. 

At the end of some files I sent to an editor or publisher, I would add a note explaining that I am a blind journalist and that my screen reader does not always allow me to verify the document’s final visual appearance. 

The problem was not the article. I knew what I had written, why one paragraph came before another, and I could defend almost every sentence. The problem was something that sounds trivial until it becomes par...Read more