AXSChat Podcast

AI is everywhere right now, but the most useful question isn’t “what can it do?” It’s “who does it work for?” We sit down with Neil Barnett, Microsoft’s new Chief Accessibility Officer, to talk about what it takes to make technology work for everyone, especially people with disabilities, and why accessibility has to be treated as a core business priority rather than a bolt-on.

We get...

A single smile can explain web accessibility better than a thousand audits. Makoto Ueki joins us from Japan to share the moment that changed his career: watching an 80+ year old woman, newly blind, learn to search Google with a screen reader and light up when the results finally appeared. That story sets the tone for a practical, human conversation about why accessible technology matters and how inclusive design turns the web into ...

“Inclusive” is one of those words everyone loves to say and almost nobody builds all the way through. We sit down with Jamie Cooke, Executive Director of Inclusion International, to get practical about what inclusion really takes for people with intellectual disabilities and their families across more than 100 countries, from local realities to global advocacy at the United Nations. Along the way, we unpack the tension ...

A clunky accommodations process can undo years of diversity work in a single bad moment. Neil Milliken sits down with disability inclusion consultant Deb Dagit to get specific about what actually helps employees with disabilities thrive at work and what quietly blocks them, even inside well-meaning companies. Deb shares her lived experience with apparent and non-apparent disabilities, and the practical realities of mobility devices...

Accessibility is not a “nice to have” add-on to the economy. It is consumer protection, civil rights, and a growth strategy, and it only becomes real when disabled people are in the rooms where power is exercised. We’re joined by Katrin Langensiepen, a Greens Member of the European Parliament, to talk candidly about what disability representation looks like inside EU policymaking, and how easily the media and the ...

Your inbox is where productivity goes to die, especially when the tools assume you can constantly scan a screen, hunt for tiny buttons, and triple-check every draft. We sit down with Sriram, founder of Lumin, to unpack what happens when an AI voice assistant is built for blind and low vision users first and held to a higher standard: it has to be accurate enough to trust, fast enough to use daily, and deep enough to handle real ema...

AI is rewriting job descriptions, regulators are getting sharper, and accessibility teams are being asked to prove value faster than ever. So we put Neil Milliken in the spotlight to talk about his leap from leading global accessibility at Atos to founding Thrival Holdings, a boutique consultancy built around one simple idea: help organisations create the conditions where people thrive, not just survive. 

We dig into ho...

A power wheelchair user reaches the gangway on a dream cruise, looks down, and realises there is no safe way off the ship. Everyone cares. Nobody knows what to do. That single moment captures the real accessibility crisis: not a shortage of good intentions, but a shortage of systems that make accessible service repeatable, calm, and consistent. 

We sit down with Gavin Neate, founder of WelcoMe, and Mike Clapper of Able2...

93% of disabled delegates facing barriers at events should be a wake-up call, not a footnote. We sit down with Catherine Grinyer, (Attendable), Shani Dhanda (accessibility consultant and broadcaster), and Orla Pearson (My ClearText and Access Loop) to get honest about why event accessibility is still so inconsistent and what it takes to fix it without hand-waving.

We dig into the thinking behind The Accessible Event Show and...

Accessibility at work is easy to talk about and hard to deliver, especially when your “office” includes fulfillment centers, delivery stations, corporate teams, and cutting-edge tech roles spread across the globe. We sit down with Megan Smith, Global Accommodations and People Accessibility Lead within Amazonian Experiences and Technology, to unpack what it really takes to run accommodations and workplace accessibility p...

One sentence can flip an interview from warm to frozen: “I should tell you I’m visually impaired.” That moment sits at the heart of our conversation with Steve Tyler, Director of Assistive Tech and Transformation at Leonard Cheshire, and Jasmin Ambiong, a blind Filipina disability inclusion and accessibility advocate and Billion Strong ambassador joining us from Wellington, New Zealand.

We get specific abou...

A theme park where wheelchair users do not get parked in the front row, where sensory needs shape the design, and where “accessible” is not a single modified option, it is the whole experience. We sit down with Sharon Newhardt, inclusion strategist at Morgan’s Wonderland and Morgan’s Inclusion Institute, to unpack what ultra-accessible really looks like when you build a destination from the ground up.

A horse does not show up with preconceptions about disability, status, or what you can do. It meets you as you are, responds to your body and energy, and somehow makes space for confidence to grow. That simple idea becomes powerful when you hear how Riding for the Disabled Association (RDA) turns it into real support for thousands of people across the UK. 

We sit down with Michael Bishop, CEO of RDA UK, to explain what ...

AI is changing work faster than most humans can comfortably process, and that speed is colliding with already exhausted nervous systems. We sit down with Marie-Hélène Pelletier (MH), a leadership psychologist, executive coach and author of The Resilience Plan, to unpack what resilience really means when the pressure is constant and the stakes feel personal. The big shift: resilience is not a trait you either have or lack. It’...

A museum can hold 30 million objects and still feel inaccessible if the experience depends on sight alone. We sit down with Tina Schneider from the Natural History Museum in Berlin to hear how her team is pushing beyond digitisation and into real world inclusion by turning digital specimens into tactile, responsive learning tools.

Tina shares the moment that changed her priorities: a visitor tells her how her blind daughter ...

“We have no employees using drugs or alcohol.” Georges Petitjean has heard versions of that line for years, even while treating people who are quietly disappearing into detox, struggling in silence, or terrified their employer will find out. The problem isn’t that workplace addiction is rare. The problem is that stigma makes it easy to deny, hard to disclose, and expensive to ignore.

We’re joined by G...

The scariest part of AI isn’t the sci-fi stuff, it’s how fast it can change the tools people already rely on to live and communicate. We sit down with Dr Julie Eshleman, a postdoctoral researcher working across Georgia Tech and Georgia State, to connect the dots between AI-powered assistive technology, Medicaid waiver systems, and the policies that will decide what comes next for disabled people and their families.
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If we can name every brand that gets accessibility wrong, why do so many disabled people still avoid working for disability organisations? That question drives our conversation with Deborah Ruh about Billion Strong’s new Disability Power Index, a “mirror” built to measure how well disability organisations actually walk the talk on accessibility, inclusion, and representation.

We unpack what makes this index...

Movies have taught us what disability is supposed to look like for more than a century and too often the answer is a tired binary: tragedy or inspiration. We sit down with Isaac Zablocki, co-founder and CEO of ReelAbilities, and Lawrence Carter-Long, director of engagement, to talk about how their disability film festival is pushing for something better: authentic disability representation with nuance, artistry, and real authorship...