Facilitating sharing and re-use of accessibility datasets

Abstract

While advances in technologies like artificial intelligence promise a lot of possibilities for the disability community, they are centered around data-driven approaches. Datasets and data sharing play an important role in training and testing machine learning models and helping deployed systems work better in the real world. However, sharing data sourced from people with disabilities or older adults poses ethical and privacy concerns, which significantly limit the availability and re-use of accessibility datasets. Under such tension between making their data accessible and restricting access to protect the people represented in the data, this paper serves as a starting point to call for action in developing guidelines and frameworks for ethical use and sharing of accessibility datasets. The work proposes to take a mixed-method research approach to gain a deep understanding of the need and challenges of shared resources in this field. The insights gained will facilitate discussions on the future of data sharing and ownership in accessibility research contributing to informing the development of inclusive AI applications and assistive technologies.