We are disappointed that the European Parliament’s political group did not table amendments to ensure binding accessibility requirements for all Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems in the AI Act.
The Parliament’s position on the Act was approved today, 14 June, and it only considers accessibility in high-risk AI systems. However, certain systems classified as “medium and low risk” may become high-risk for persons with disabilities when their accessibility is not considered.
Other significant challenges remain:
- The European Parliament’s position does not safeguard the right for an individual to get an explanation as to why an AI system made a certain decision – the current text foresees that this right is only applicable to systems classified as high-risk. This will create a so-called “black box” effect that may preclude individuals from knowing if they were discriminated against – including on protected grounds, such as disability.
- We are gravely concerned that the European Parliament did not ban the use of AI for profiling or risk assessment of individuals in the context of asylum, migration or border management;
However, the European Disability Forum recognises the extreme importance of regulating Artificial Intelligence and welcomes the strengthening of human rights provisions in relation to the original proposal, notably:
- A full ban on remote biometric recognition;
- An obligation on providers of foundational models (such as ChatGPT) to be transparent about what purposes it is safe to use their technology for, and disclose when content was created by an AI. We welcome this provision, especially since persons with disabilities are likelier to be victims of fraud and disinformation.
We also note that while the text creates the rights for individuals to file complaints with supervisory authorities (which is positive in theory), public interest organisations are not. Given the complexity of AI systems, it is insufficient to leave it to individuals (and groups of individuals) to file a complaint themselves.
We strongly call on the European Parliament’s negotiators to defend human rights and accessibility as an enabler of the rights of persons with disabilities during the upcoming discussions and to ensure strong provisions on accessibility for all systems are present in the final text.