Accessibility is no longer an emerging idea on the margins of product design. It has become central to how leading technology companies define quality, innovation, and responsibility. As the Consumer Technology Association’s (CTA) Accessibility and Age Tech Working Group marks its first year, its experience offers a practical blueprint for how industries can move from advocacy to impact.
The group, convened under the umbrella of CES, brings together more than 70 organizations—from startups to global brands—to address a shared reality: despite pockets of excellence, people with disabilities and older adults still face systemic barriers to using technology, accessing services, and participating fully in the economy.
What distinguishes this effort is not the rhetoric, but the operating model. The working group treats accessibility as a collective infrastructure challenge, not a competitive differentiator. The result is a rare, neutral space where companies share not only their successes but also their missteps, and where tools and frameworks are built for industry-wide use.
The working group was formed to address a clear gap: while individual companies were making progress, the experience for people with disabilities remained fragmented and inconsistent. Some brands offered world-class accessibility; others had barely started. The result was uneven access to education, employment, emergency information, and everyday digital services.
By design, the CTA working group functions as a neutral convening platform, not a marketing stage. Members include accessibility leaders from large enterprises, UX designers, startup founders, technologists, and representatives from disability and aging communities. They meet regularly to share what works, what fails, and what needs to change.
Several principles have guided the group’s approach:
This shift—from proprietary posturing to shared problem-solving—is subtle but decisive. It enables the ecosystem to move faster together, particularly in areas where the stakes are high, such as emergency communication or independent living for older adults.
Awareness of accessibility’s importance is no longer the primary constraint. Many executives now recognize the moral, regulatory, and economic case—estimated at over $4 trillion in market opportunity—for inclusive design. The bottleneck has moved from “why” to “how.”
To close this gap, the working group’s flagship deliverable in its first year was the Accessibility and Age Tech Guidebook, an industry-informed resource available to CTA members. Its purpose is to translate aspiration into concrete organizational practice.
The guidebook is designed to help organizations:
Critically, the guidebook is not a static checklist. It is intended as a living resource that:
For large enterprises, such as Amazon—with countless business lines and teams—the value of shared, industry-level guidance is especially high. When terminology, principles, and expectations are consistent, organizations can scale accessibility more quickly and coherently.
A recurring theme across the working group’s first year is the insistence on building with, not for, disability and aging communities. Technology that is technically “accessible” but difficult to find, afford, or learn still fails the people it is intended to serve.
Several practices stand out:
The distinction between accessibility and access is central. It is not enough to meet technical standards; solutions must also be:
The underlying mindset shift is powerful: aging and disability are not niche conditions affecting “others.” They are a shared, inevitable human experience. When organizations internalize that, accessibility becomes a long-term investment in their own customers’, employees’, and families’ futures.
The rise of generative AI, new interaction modes, and immersive environments is reshaping how work is done. For people with disabilities, this transition represents both risk and opportunity. Historically, inaccessible tools and interfaces have excluded many from education and employment. Repeating that pattern in the next wave of technology would deepen existing inequities.
Members of the working group argue that this moment is a chance to rethink interfaces altogether. Much of today’s digital accessibility effort is devoted to retrofitting an ecosystem built around keyboards, mice, and visually dense software. New AI-driven systems offer a possibility to remove, rather than add, layers of friction.
For leaders, several imperatives emerge:
The strategic risk is clear: if emerging tools are built primarily around the capabilities and preferences of a narrow user group, people with disabilities will once again be forced into workarounds. The strategic opportunity is equally clear: by making natural, multimodal interaction a first-class requirement, organizations can create experiences that are better for everyone—not just those with recognized accessibility needs.
One year into the CTA Accessibility and Age Tech Working Group, the message to the broader industry is not that the work is finished—it is that there is finally a scalable way to start, improve, and accelerate. The call to action is explicitly expansive: grow from 70 companies to 100, then 140, and beyond. The more diverse the ecosystem, the stronger the shared infrastructure becomes.
For executives and leaders across sectors, several practical steps emerge from the working group’s experience:
The most important mindset shift may be the simplest: treating accessibility and age tech as foundational to innovation that lasts. Technologies that are “born accessible”—designed from the outset for our future, older, and more diverse selves—are more resilient, more equitable, and more likely to succeed in a world where inclusion is no longer optional.
The next decade of consumer technology will be defined not just by what is possible, but by who is included. Leaders who choose to collaborate, share, and build with the communities they serve will set the standard for what responsible, high-impact innovation looks like.