Top Tech Tidbits (2026)

15/01/2026

From Courtrooms to Culture: Samuel J. Levine Brings Disability Rights & Inclusion to Touro Law on March 12th & 13th 2026 | Dr. Kirk Adams
https://drkirkadams.com/touro-law-3rd-annual-disability-conference/

Here, Dr. Kirk Adams highlights Touro Law's "3rd Annual Disability Rights & Inclusion Conference," a hybrid convening taking place March 12-13, 2026 at Touro University Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center in Central Islip, New York, and online via Zoom, offering up to 13.5 CLE credits (including ethics/professionalism). The conference is organized by Professor Samuel J. Levine, a Touro Law professor and the Director of Touro Law's Jewish Law Institute, whose background spans legal practice, scholarship, and leadership in professional ethics, helping explain why this event reaches beyond narrow doctrine into the real-world systems where disability rights are won or quietly lost.

Dr. Adams emphasizes that the conference is intentionally built "from courtrooms to culture," bringing together voices and perspectives across employment, self-advocacy, judicial leadership, education, services and supports, faith and international perspectives, and even the arts, to advance disability rights and inclusion as durable institutional practice. He closes with a clear invitation to attend, in person or online, and to share the opportunity with colleagues and networks, underscoring that the gap between what institutions say and what they do narrows only when people show up, learn, and carry the work forward.

15/01/2026

👉 What: Event: Can We Talk: Adaptation Ventures and Dr. Kirk Adams
📍 Where: World Trade Center Seattle
📅 When: January 22, 2026 | 7:30 AM PST - 10:30 AM PST
✏️ Register: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/can-we-talk-adaptation-ventures-and-dr-kirk-adams-tickets-1976959531176
📰 More Information: https://drkirkadams.com/can-we-talk-event-01-22-2026/

🚀 Seattle: Let's talk about the world's largest overlooked market — and why it's a massive opportunity.

On January 22, I'll be joining Brittany Palmer and Rich Palmer (Co-Founders of Adaptation Ventures) for World Trade Center Seattle's Can We Talk series — and I'd love to see you there.

💡 Why this conversation matters

We're living in a moment where innovation is accelerating — but investment and product strategy are still lagging behind one unstoppable truth: disability, neurodivergence, and aging represent a market tied to roughly $18T in purchasing power. And yet, historically, only a tiny fraction of venture investment has gone into this space.

That gap isn't just an equity problem. It's a business problem.
And for the leaders who understand it early, it's a competitive advantage.

🔥 What we'll cover (real talk, real strategy)

✅ Why disability + accessibility is not a niche — it's a global economic force
✅ What “accessible tech” actually looks like in 2026 (AI, inclusive products, aging tech, neurodivergent-friendly design)
✅ Why early-stage capital matters — and how Adaptation Ventures is filling the “first money in” gap
✅ What investors should look for when evaluating accessibility + disability innovation
✅ How companies can move from “compliance” to growth strategy through accessibility
✅ The truth: accessibility is expensive when you bolt it on late — it's powerful when you build it in early

👥 Why I'm excited to share the stage with Brittany & Rich

They're building one of the most important investor communities in the country focused on accelerating innovation in disability, neurodivergence, and aging — and they bring something rare to venture: lived experience + founder/operator credibility + investment leadership.

If you're an investor, founder, corporate leader, DEI/DEIA practitioner, or just someone who cares about building what's next — this is your room.

🥐 Bonus: Breakfast + meaningful conversation + the kind of networking Seattle is famous for.

👉 What: Event: Can We Talk: Adaptation Ventures and Dr. Kirk Adams
📍 Where: World Trade Center Seattle
📅 When: January 22, 2026 | 7:30 AM PST - 10:30 AM PST
✏️ Register: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/can-we-talk-adaptation-ventures-and-dr-kirk-adams-tickets-1976959531176
📰 More Information: https://drkirkadams.com/can-we-talk-event-01-22-2026/

🔁 If you know someone who should be in this conversation, tag them or share this post.
Because inclusion isn't just the right thing to do — it's a strategic advantage.

15/01/2026

Remote Incident Manager (RIM) From Pneuma Solutions | Aaron Di Blasi | AT-Newswire
https://at-newswire.com/remote-incident-manager-from-pneuma-solutions/

Here, Aaron Di Blasi describes a familiar failure mode in enterprise remote support: organizations deploy “best-in-class” remote tools that work fine for most staff, but quietly shut out blind and low-vision technicians and users because the experience assumes a sighted operator and a primarily visual interface. He explains how this accessibility gap shows up in day-to-day support, workarounds like putting a phone on speaker so a technician can hear a user's screen reader, longer “tell me what you see” calls, and capable blind IT professionals being excluded from frontline rotations, ultimately driving slower resolution times, inconsistent support quality, and a widening mismatch between stated accessibility commitments and actual workflows.

Di Blasi introduces Pneuma Solutions' Remote Incident Manager (RIM) as a remote desktop platform designed from the ground up to make remote support usable on equal terms for blind, low-vision, and sighted technicians without trading off security or features. The centerpiece is streaming the target machine's system audio (including screen reader speech) to the controller, alongside keyboard-first accessibility, attended and explicitly governed unattended access, and enterprise controls like encryption, consent, and optional private deployment. He closes by framing accessibility as infrastructure, not a special-case accommodation, and recommends evaluating RIM through stakeholder interviews, a real-world pilot with metrics, and early security/compliance involvement to ensure one remote support stack can serve everyone effectively.

15/01/2026

Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, January 15, 2026 - Volume 1050
https://toptechtidbits.com/newsletter-01-15-2026/

♿️ The Week's News in Access Technology
A Mind Vault Solutions, Ltd. Publication

Top Tech Tidbits. The world's #1 online resource for current news and trends in access technology.

Subscribers: 43,255 🔢️ subscribers were sent this issue via email.
Social Media: 180,511 🔢️ readers were sent this issue via social media. Courtesy of the PWD Media Co-op.

Top Tech Tidbits is the world's leading not-for-profit access technology publication that reaches over 43,000 blind, low vision, deaf, hard of hearing, deafblind, neurodivergent and/or disabled professionals, educators and enthusiasts, all over the world, each week.

14/01/2026

CES 2026: When Innovation Remembers (and Forgets) Who It's For
https://drkirkadams.com/ces-2026/

Here, Dr. Kirk Adams recounts attending CES 2026 as a strategic advisor and small shareholder in Innosearch.ai, which exhibited in Eureka Park, an area he describes as vibrant and community-like for accessibility and disability-inclusion innovators. Surrounded by companies building assistive and universally designed tech, he feels both energized and affirmed, arguing that disability inclusion isn't charity but a market-expanding driver of better design.

Stepping into the broader CES, though, he's struck by how many mainstream products remain inaccessible, touchscreens without tactile cues, tiny visual interfaces, and apps that don't work with screen readers, prompting a central question: does concentrating accessibility companies in Eureka Park limit their influence? With AI now the dominant theme at CES (replacing the robot-heavy buzz of 2021), he warns that AI can either accelerate inclusion through smarter, adaptive interfaces or scale exclusion by reproducing biased assumptions. He ends hopeful, urging accessibility to be “baked in” from the start and calling for the energy of Eureka Park to be integrated across the entire tech ecosystem so the future being built is usable by everyone.

14/01/2026

Inclusion Is a Strategic Advantage And It's Local: Innovative Impact, LLC Joins the Good Business Network of Washington | Dr. Kirk Adams
https://drkirkadams.com/innovative-impact-joins-good-business-network-of-washington/

Here, Dr. Kirk Adams announces that Innovative Impact, LLC has joined the Good Business Network of Washington and frames the decision as a practical commitment to making inclusion a measurable, local economic advantage, not a compliance exercise. He ties the network's mission of helping people buy, produce, and invest locally to his central thesis that inclusion is a strategic advantage, arguing that the same ingredient powers both: strong relationships across businesses, municipalities, community organizations, and residents.

He then grounds the case in concrete examples of what the network builds, Seattle Restored's activation of 100+ vacant storefronts and Good Food Kitchens' model that supported 40+ food businesses and funded 75,000+ meals, showing how coordinated local action creates real outcomes. From there, he explains where Innovative Impact fits: a structured, measurement-driven approach to disability workforce inclusion (audits, leadership planning, training, inclusive design consultation), while acknowledging the real time and capacity constraints many businesses face and positioning the network as a way to lower that burden through shared resources and partnerships.

13/01/2026

🎙️ That Real Blind Tech Show Episode 193: A Conversation with Dr. Kirk Adams: Talking Careers, Leadership, and Cyber Security
https://thatrealblindtechshow.libsyn.com/episode-193-a-conversation-with-dr-kirk-adams-talking-careers-leadership-and-cyber-security

It's an all new That Real Blind Tech show as Brian is joined by Dr. Kirk Adams to discuss Kirk's background, the state of accessibility, employment, and Kirk's Cyber security training program.

Brian kicks the interview off getting Kirk's opinion about the state of accessibility as 2025 comes to an end.

We then discuss some of Kirk's career highlights.

This rolls us in to discussing the still staggering unemployment rate of the blind, and raises the question of how important is braille in 2025.

Next we discuss Kirk's consulting business Innovative Impact (https://drkirkadams.com/innovative-impact/). Kirk then tells us about the Apex Program (https://theapexprogram.com/).

We then discuss the failure of some blind organizations promoting blind individuals to the executive level.

And finally we dive in to some career advice for those blind students out there and what they may want to think about as far as career paths.

You can reach out to Dr. Kirk Adams on Linkedin at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirkadamsphd/.

13/01/2026

AI-Weekly for Tuesday, January 13, 2026 - Issue 199
https://ai-weekly.ai/newsletter-01-13-2026/

✨ The Week's News in Artificial Intelligence
A Mind Vault Solutions, Ltd. Publication

Subscribers: 47,718 🔢️ subscribers were sent this issue via email.

AI-Weekly is the world's #1 online resource for current news and trends in artificial intelligence that reaches over 45,000 AI professionals, educators and enthusiasts, all over the world, each week.

12/01/2026

From Screen Readers to Conversation Partners: How Voice-First AI Could Soon Change Everything for Blind and Low-Vision People | Aaron Di Blasi | TopTechTidbits.com
https://toptechtidbits.com/how-voice-first-ai-could-soon-change-everything-for-blv-people/

Here, Aaron Di Blasi argues that voice-first AI is nearing an "interface shift" that could be as consequential for blind and low-vision people as the arrival of modern screen readers: instead of painstakingly navigating screen-based obstacle courses (unlabeled buttons, broken forms, CAPTCHAs, kiosk-first workflows), users could increasingly express intent through natural conversation and get outcomes directly. He defines a true "conversation partner" as fast, full-duplex voice interaction that supports interruption and redirection, plus practical layers like transcription, translation, emotional prosody, and (with camera/broadcast modes) the ability to interpret what's on a screen or in the environment, turning accessibility from "reading interfaces" into "conversing with systems."

He positions OpenAI's Advanced Voice Mode as a bellwether for where this is heading and stresses that hardware will be the multiplier once AI gets "off the screen" into voice-first, potentially screenless companions. Di Blasi then maps the competitive race (Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Apple, and others), highlights the real-world use cases that matter most (visual interpretation, productivity, navigation, shopping, reduced fatigue), and flags the biggest risks: privacy and surveillance concerns, confident errors in high-stakes contexts, pricing barriers, and, most importantly, the dangerous myth that AI can replace accessibility standards. His call to action is a "head start" plan: try the best voice AI you can access now, build repeatable voice workflows (notes → summary → actions, drafting, meeting prep, comparisons), share failures loudly to improve products, and keep demanding accessible design alongside better AI tools.

12/01/2026

PDF Accessibility and Compliance — Strategy Answers the Challenge | Mark Miller, Inclusion Impact
https://inclusionimpact.co/?p=519

Great blog post breaking down the challenges organizations have with document/PDF accessibility and how to formulate a solid strategy for incremental improvement. Great read!

12/01/2026

24/7 Support Without Burning Out Staff: A New AI Hotline for Nonprofits | Dr. Kirk Adams

Nonprofit leaders: if your phone line is becoming the bottleneck, you're not alone.

So many community-based organizations — especially smaller agencies — are juggling high call volume, limited staffing, and the reality that people need accurate information after hours.

That's why I'm excited to share a new resource from InnoSearch / Accessta: an AI-powered nonprofit hotline designed to help organizations provide reliable support 24/7, without burning out staff.

Each nonprofit gets its own dedicated line, and the AI can help:

✅ Provide resources and information around the clock.
✅ Register people for events or programs.
✅ Collect volunteer or intake details.
✅ Take donations or send secure payment links.

Answer FAQs, route urgent messages, and capture key data for staff follow-up

This is the kind of practical, scalable value-add that can free teams up to focus on the human work that only humans can do.

Introductory offer (limited):

✅ First 5 nonprofits receive 60 minutes free each month
➡️ After that, usage is $0.50/minute

Disclosure: I serve as a strategic advisor to InnoSearch AI and am a small shareholder.

If your organization (or one you support) could benefit from this — comment below or message me and I'll connect you. You can also reach Patrick Long directly at [email protected].

“Inclusion isn't just the right thing to do — it's a strategic advantage.”

12/01/2026

Join Me in This Work: Donate to Support ISDI and the Coalition for Sustainable Diversity & Inclusion | Dr. Kirk Adams
🎁 https://paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=3ABAKT6R4H8BU

Inclusion isn't a slogan. It's infrastructure—and right now, that infrastructure needs builders.

Today I'm sharing a personal and exciting update: I've stepped into the role of Executive Director of the Institute for Sustainable Diversity & Inclusion (ISDI). I'm also grateful to welcome Dr. Joseph Marth to the ISDI Board as we begin this next chapter together.

For more than 30 years, my work has lived at the intersection of leadership, disability inclusion, systems change, and coalition-building across nonprofits, business, philanthropy, and public policy. I said yes to leading ISDI because this moment demands experienced, values-driven leadership—and because I believe deeply in ISDI's potential to shape the future of DEIAB in the Pacific Northwest and far beyond.

And that future centers on something we're building right now:

The Coalition for Sustainable Diversity & Inclusion

This Coalition is being designed as durable, community-powered infrastructure for equity—bringing together employers, nonprofits, educators, advocates, and civic leaders to protect, strengthen, and advance DEIAB, even as it faces growing resistance.

This is not symbolic work. It's practical, strategic, and urgent.

Here's my ask—plain and simple:

If you believe DEIAB must be sustained, resourced, and community-powered, please support me and support ISDI today.

Your gift directly fuels:

👉 Launching the Coalition's core infrastructure

👉 Convenings, tools, and shared learning for leaders who are doing the work

👉 Strategic communications and rapid-response advocacy

👉 The long-term sustainability of ISDI's impact and national influence

This isn't about checking a box. It's about building something strong enough to last—strong enough to withstand pressure, pushback, and political cycles.

If you're able to help, please consider donating at: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=3ABAKT6R4H8BU.

And if you'd rather support in a non-monetary way, I'd be just as grateful if you would:

1.) Share this post,

2.) Introduce me to leaders who should be part of this Coalition, or

3.) Comment "Coalition" and I'll message you information about how to get involved.

With gratitude and resolve,

Kirk Adams, PhD

Executive Director, Institute for Sustainable Diversity & Inclusion (ISDI)

👉 Related: A Bold New Chapter for ISDI — Leadership, Coalition, and Call to Action: Dr. Kirk Adams Joins ISDI as Executive Director — Dr. Joseph Marth Joins the ISDI Board | December 18, 2025
https://drkirkadams.com/a-bold-new-chapter-for-isdi/

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