Accessibility is a crucial factor to consider when offering opportunities people to do anything: to learn, to work, to travel, to participate in daily social activities, and so on. Malini Boorgu writes that new AI technologies have “opened new doors for the neurodivergent community.” Without accessibility, these opportunities become exclusive to neurotypical people. This article walked through different technologies that may help to improve the lives neurodivergent people living in a neurotypical world, but there may be the ethical concern of neurodivergence coming to be a means of profit for companies.

The first technology that was mentioned was InnerVoice by iTherapy. The idea is to allow non-verbal children a way to better communicate with others. This is perhaps the technology that will be least likely to be exploitative, though it may depend on how affordable iTherapy makes the InnerVoice service for proactive parents interested in their child’s social development. If iTherapy prioritizes profits over the betterment of a child’s well-being, then parents could be looking at high, non-negotiable prices for a potentially necessary accessibility tool. However, according to this article posting, it appears that the price is rather affordable with a relatively lower pricing of $19.99 per month.

The second technology introduced in the article was Salesforce’s text-abstraction AI. This appeared more problematic, as the fact that there are two companies who could benefit from a person’s neuroatypicality unfairly. Salesforce sells their software product to a company desiring accessible tools and options for neurodivergent employees, which directly profits from neurodivergence itself. This is not inherently bad, but predatory tactics like price gouging is possible as we see in other settings like the pharmaceutical medicine industry which profits immensely off of disease and illness unfairly in many cases. This may harm a company’s ability to offer resources to neurodivergent employees for the sake of accessibility. On the other hand, if a company can afford Salesforce’s technology, it might be the case that the abilities granted by an employee’s neurodivergence cited by the article will be unfairly compensated despite how a company might “appreciate neurodivergent employees’ affinity for repetitive tasks,” which the article admits may be mentally taxing for neurotypical employees. Despite the excellence in this respect, the price a company pays for Salesforce’s product gives rise to the suspicion that compensation will not reflect such appreciation.

The article mentions these technological advances help to “normalize neurodiversity in the workplace,” and it is truly a miracle that technology can come as far as to help folks who are neurodivergent feel more welcomed and empowered to contribute their skills to help their team with projects or even to lead them. These technologies must remain accessible in order for the dream of total integration to come to fruition. It may be tough to keep prices controlled through competition if companies like Microsoft come to totally dominate the accessibility market with their office suite and the resources a company of their size could put into technological research and development.