Accessibility Alignment Needed for Assistive AI Agents

A recent study emphasizes that assistive technologies for Blind and Visually Impaired (BVI) individuals must prioritize accessibility alignment as a core design principle. Although advancements in agentic AI have been swift, many systems are still created based on sighted user interactions, low-cost verification processes, and acceptable trial-and-error methods, resulting in consistent failures in assistive contexts. An analysis of 778 assistance task examples from earlier research reveals that current agentic AI frequently falters due to discrepancies between design assumptions for sighted users and the verification, risk, and interaction challenges encountered by BVI users. The authors propose viewing accessibility as an alignment issue, not merely a usability afterthought, and introduce a lifecycle-oriented design framework for accessibility. The full paper can be found on arXiv with the identifier 2605.13579.