Episode 6
Digital Accessibility, Infrastructure Rather Than Request
Listen now on Apple Podcast, Spotify or watch on YouTube.
In Episode 6 of ET Talk, we continue our Digital Accessibility series with a powerful student perspective on accessibility in higher education. Cole Camplese, Vice President and CIO, sits down with Jaxsen Day, a PhD student in the School of Information whose research focuses on accessibility and education for students with disabilities.
Jaxsen was also recently featured in an OpenAI article, “From broken PDFs to instant access: How ChatGPT rebuilds the research workflow at UT Austin,” which highlights how AI tools can help improve access to academic materials for students with disabilities.
Drawing from both his academic work and lived experience, Jaxsen discusses the real barriers students encounter—from inaccessible academic materials and unstructured digital content to gaps in assistive technology training.
Throughout the conversation, Jaxsen shares how he uses AI as an assistive technology to reduce cognitive load and navigate systems that were not designed with accessibility in mind. While these tools can help bridge gaps, he emphasizes that access should never depend on a student’s ability to self‑teach, advocate, or build workarounds. Instead, the episode reinforces a central theme of the series: accessibility must be treated as institutional infrastructure, not something students are required to request.
“AI is a crutch for accessibility, but I hope it becomes more of just a sanity check in the future.”
— Jaxsen Day