CFP: AI for Good for the Disability Community, Topical Collection in AI & Ethics

This topical collection invites contributions that critically examine whether and how AI can be used for good for people with disabilities, with particular attention to education and health. The current technological zeitgeist suggests great potential for adaptive technologies to support disabled individuals such as AI enabled wheelchairs. As AI technologies develop more quickly, the hopes of more advanced technologies such as brain-computer interfaces are becoming more likely. However, without a fuller understanding of how disability is constructed and experienced within sociotechnical systems, AI tools may fail to deliver meaningful benefits and instead produce harm—for example, by reifying biased assumptions embedded in datasets or by creating technologies that are faulty or difficult to use. These risks are especially prevalent in domains such as education and healthcare. Longstanding inequities are often reinforced through technological intervention such as in the case of speech recognition and erroneous flagging of disabled users as fraudulent. We hope to facilitate conversations around what normative considerations are necessary to help the creation of AI tools that genuinely contribute to the wellbeing of the disability community.

This collection therefore interrogates the notion of “AI for good” by asking: under what conditions can AI be ethically designed, used, and governed with and by disability communities, rather than reproducing structural inequalities? AI for good has been conceptualized in existing scholarship such as in the law, AI for Good (AI4G) social movement, foundational ethical principles, and applications in start-ups. Building on and interrogating the “AI for good” framework, we seek to critically bridge and extend scholarship on responsible AI, AI harms affecting marginalized communities, algorithmic justice, and data justice alongside perspectives from critical disability studies, crip theory and disability justice. Rather than treating these as parallel or distinct conversations, we position disability studies and disability justice as our central analytical lens for rethinking the theoretical and empirical foundations of “AI for good.”

This topical collection is connected to the upcoming convening,“Focusing Policy for Good: Promoting AI for Good for the Disability Community,” which will take place on February 26-28, 2027, at the University of San Diego. The convening is generously supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant. Selected contributions from the convening participants will be considered for inclusion in the topical collection together with submissions from the open call for papers, with all contributions being subject to the usual peer review process.