By Dr Ashley Subbiah
The future of inclusive higher education will not be determined simply by how much assistive technology is available. South Africa already has access to a growing range of technologies—including screen readers, refreshable Braille displays, optical character recognition, speech-to-text, captioning, magnification, accessible digital formats and increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence. The more important question is whether these technologies enable students with disabilities to participate independently throughout their educational journey.
Distance education has enormous potential to remove physical barriers for students with disabilities. Digital textbooks, captioned lectures and online learning environments can provide greater flexibility and enable students to use technologies configured around their individual requirements. However, distance does not automatically mean accessibility. An inaccessible learning-management system, unreadable PDF, inaccessible examination platform or uncaptioned video can simply transfer barriers from the physical environment into the digital one.
This highlights an important shift in how universities should approach disability inclusion. Traditional support models often rely on disclosure, individual assessment, accommodation and intervention by disability support services. While these mechanisms remain important, technology provides an opportunity to move from reactive accommodation to proactive accessibility—identifying and removing barriers before students encounter them.
Assistive technology should also no longer be viewed simply as a collection of individual products. A student experiences an ecosystem: receiving communication, accessing the learning platform, reading course material, conducting research, participating in tutorials, submitting assignments, completing assessments and communicating with academics. Accessibility is therefore only as strong as the weakest link in this chain. Universities need to map accessibility across the entire student journey, from application and registration through teaching, assessment, communication and ultimately graduation.
Artificial intelligence is likely to become an important part of this ecosystem. AI-assisted technologies can already support functions such as OCR, image description, transcription, translation, summarisation and information extraction. Their potential lies not merely in converting information from one format to another, but in transforming information into forms that are more navigable and meaningful—for example, turning recorded lectures into captions, searchable transcripts and structured notes, or helping transform complex visual information into textual or tactile representations.
However, AI should not be treated as automatically accessible or infallible. Accuracy, privacy, data governance, intellectual property and academic integrity all need to be considered. The institutional question should therefore be where AI can safely and responsibly reduce accessibility barriers while maintaining quality and protecting students and their information.
The growing sophistication of speech and AI technologies also does not diminish the importance of Braille. For university students, Braille continues to provide access to structure, spelling, notation and literacy, particularly in areas such as mathematics, programming, chemical notation, foreign languages, music, proofreading and coding. The future should therefore not be framed as speech versus Braille, but as speech + Braille + AI + accessible digital content, allowing students to select the most appropriate modality for the task.
For this transformation to occur, accessibility must move upstream within the university. It needs to be incorporated into procurement, curriculum design, learning-management-system selection, digital content standards, assessment design, digital-library procurement, staff training, IT governance and quality assurance. Procurement is particularly powerful: when universities acquire digital platforms or services, accessibility should form part of the technical specification, and students with disabilities should be involved in testing whether they can independently use the functionality provided. A vendor’s compliance statement is not necessarily the same as lived accessibility.
The ultimate measure of success should therefore extend beyond graduation, retention and student satisfaction. Universities should also consider digital independence: how independently students can access learning materials, participate in teaching and complete assessments. Two students may achieve the same academic outcome while having fundamentally different levels of independence in getting there. Inclusive higher education should aim not merely for academic success, but for students to develop the ability to participate independently through accessible technology.
This is particularly important in the South African context. Accessibility solutions must take account of unequal access to devices, connectivity constraints, data costs, digital literacy, electricity challenges, geographic dispersion, language diversity and socioeconomic inequality. The future therefore requires appropriate technology, not simply advanced technology. Innovation only has value when technology is accessible, usable and sustainable for the students who need it.
There is also a changing role for the assistive technology sector itself. Technology providers cannot simply arrive at universities with a catalogue of products. Institutions need accessibility assessment, technology selection, integration, procurement guidance, training, technical support, evaluation and long-term strategy. The role of the provider must evolve from supplier, to technical partner, and ultimately to accessibility partner.
The future of South African distance higher education should therefore be built around a simple principle: technology should be embedded within an accessible system, rather than used to compensate for an inaccessible one. The objective is not more devices, more software or more AI for their own sake. It is better educational outcomes, greater independence, greater participation, greater dignity and greater opportunity.
As higher education becomes increasingly digital, the question is no longer whether assistive technology exists. The question is whether the entire educational environment enables students with disabilities to learn, participate, succeed and belong on an equal basis. That is the opportunity—and the responsibility—at the heart of the future of assistive technology in South African distance higher education.
* Dr Ashley Subbiah is the Head of Business Development at Sensory Logix and Sensory Solutions – he leads solutions-driven initiatives focused on expanding access to Assistive Technology across education, government, corporate, and community sectors in Southern Africa. His work centres on strategic partnerships, accessibility innovation, Braille literacy, digital inclusion, and the development of scalable Assistive Technology ecosystems that promote independence and inclusion for persons with disabilities. *