Our Takeaways from the 40th Annual CSUN Assistive Technology Conference

Last month, we had the privilege of attending the 40th annual CSUN Assistive Technology Conference, and what an incredible experience! From the moment we arrived, we were blown away by the energy and enthusiasm of the AT/accessibility community. With over 4,000 attendees, there was no shortage of people to talk to.

Walking away from the event, we couldn’t help but feel a surge of optimism about the future of the industry. The countless conversations we had and the innovations we encountered left us excited about what’s on the horizon for assistive tech. At risk of sounding like starry-eyed AI optimists, we strongly believe the next few years will be some of the best and most disruptive ones accessibility and assistive technology have ever seen. It is quite the time to be alive!

Here is a rundown of our key takeaways from the event.

Orientation, Mobility, and Navigation

If you’ve ever been to a major convention, you know that navigation can be quite a challenge (for anyone, disability or not). The Anaheim Convention Center boasts over 1 million square feet, excluding hotel amenities. This difficulty is only exacerbated for people who are blind and/or that have trouble identifying and reading signage. Luckily, assistive technology innovations provide a serviceable solution:

• Audiom is an accessible, dynamic, web-based application that can be embedded into a page allowing blind and visually impaired individuals to explore a location virtually, almost as if they were playing a game. This makes it possible to create effective mental models of a space before physically getting there. Sound interesting? You can try out the accessible CSUN map to get an idea of how it works.
• For real-time indoor navigation, GoodMaps came to the rescue. A few years ago, the standard was that reliable information could only be provided within 30 feet of accuracy, at best if you were lucky. These days, it is possible to do much better—think within 5 to 10 feet. This improvement is made possible by combining data from the camera and LiDAR sensor simultaneously. Anecdotally, we found that it worked far better than we could have imagined.
• Glidance is creating an AI-powered mobility and navigation aid that autonomously directs users around obstacles/hazards, locates doors, elevators, stairs, previously visited points of interest, describes surroundings, and more. The MVP as demoed at the conference did not have any of the location features. They did, however, feel more natural than expected after a couple minutes of use. There have been many attempts to re-create the cane (it’s practically a textbook Master’s or PHD thesis idea at this point). Glidance is taking a different approach by creating a new device altogether. It remains to be seen whether this one will withstand the test of time.
• Speaking of new devices, this is the first time we’ve encountered or heard about the MakeSense Vector. This one doesn’t try to reinvent the cane, nor does it try to replace it. Instead, it is a handheld device which provides extremely accurate sensors, a military grade GPS, and a haptic interface for feedback. The unit itself looks kind of like a flashlight with a wheel on one end. It is intended to be held in the hand, and the wheel will point in a direction free of obstacles or that leads to where a user is wanting to go. Right now it is intended to retrace a route the user has taken before, though there are plans to support exploration of new environments, according to the team.
• This was the year of AI and navigation glasses. Plenty of attendees were wearing the Meta Ray-Ban glasses, but there were new products on display like the EchoVision from AGIGA, and the SignGlasses for real-time sign language interpretation. We believe the war over the best smart glasses is really just starting, and it will be just that. You can only wear one pair of glasses on your face at a time, after all.

Accessibility

• Is the typical approach to auditing for digital compliance broken? There are times when you might want an audit (such as in legal cases or to create an ACR/VPAT). That said, an audit is not always the answer. There are many instances where you might be better served through a usability review, program assessment, and/or higher quality training. In other words, if you need accessibility services, and the vendor you are talking to is not taking a consultative approach or trying to get to the bottom of the challenges you are facing, it is probably a good idea not to choose that vendor lest you risk leaving money on the table. From “Accessibility Consulting is Broken” (Karl Groves).
• Lainey Feingold (award winning speaker, lawyer, and author of Structured Negotiation) gave a moving talk on the legal state of accessibility. She described the current U.S. legal and political environment as chaotic and uncertain on account of risks to federal regulations, agency guidance, and enforcement actions (such as recent Department of Education staff firings and attacks on DEI initiatives). However, foundational laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act (now widely recognized to apply to the digital world) and Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (specifically Section 504 and Section 508) have existed for decades and continue to serve as strong protections. Power to protect these rights comes from ongoing legal resistance on the part of civil rights lawyers, state Attorneys General, civil enforcement, organizations committed to accessibility, and passionate advocates from the disability community. Feingold urges the accessibility community to find hope, share success stories, take care of themselves, and adhere to the principle, “Don’t Obey in Advance”. You can find the slides and video here.
• Keynote speaker Gabby Giffords summarized a common sentiment by pointing out that as long as there are people around doing the work, the work will not stop. It only ends when everyone gives up.
• OneCourt is making live sports broadcasts more accessible by transforming gameplay into trackable vibrations that users can feel. Computer vision takes everything happening on the field and converts it into structured data that is interpreted by the book-sized device.
• Mind the Gap: What Experts Forget When Teaching Accessibility: A must read by Tess Hutley for anyone who has or plans to conduct accessibility training at their institution. It is all too common for accessibility engineers to forget how much specialized knowledge they have, especially when so much time is spent trying to advocate and impart the basics. Training is only truly effective when we understand our audience and meet them where they are.
• The Monarch braille display from APH got a lot of people talking thanks to its ten-line braille display and ability to render graphics, including SVGs. The rollout is expected to be gradual, but the product will begin becoming more widely available this year.

Artificial Intelligence

• Ensuring Trust in AI with Inclusive Design: The slides were removed, but you can still read the medium article that inspired the talk. It touches on how we can incorporate Trauma-informed design (TID) principles, originally created in the context of architecture and services, toward ensuring that AI-based products are supporting as wide of an audience as possible. This approach places an emphasis on safety, trustworthiness, transparency, user choice, and the consideration of different cultural backgrounds. The core idea is to “do no harm” by ensuring users understand when content is AI generated, explaining how AI reaches its conclusions, and the associated risks. One of the examples we hadn’t encountered before is the uninvited trend of sparkles, propellers, rainbow borders, and other such animations being used to signal to a user that an AI is involved. No commonly used screen reader announces these indicators by default, so it is highly likely they will be missed.
• Balancing Ethics and Risk in Assistive Tech with AI: Are we prepared for technology that doesn’t provide accurate information all of the time? Most users, for all the talk of rampant misdirection and misinformation, still hold a fundamental expectation that what they read online is factual. GenAI will seem to know a lot about a lot when it comes to topics about which you know very little and miss the mark in areas where you may consider yourself an expert. This talk touches on how we might handle this limitation, with plenty of practical examples to get you thinking.

Resources and Further Reading

• CSUN has put together a YouTube playlist with a few featured talks.
• CSUNATC 2025 Recap – Adrian Roselli
• CSUN 2025 Conference Notes – AlastairC
• My CSUNATC 2025 Notes – Ted Drake

What Are We Missing?

Reach out and let us know!

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