Monica Cerdan-Chiscano

Over the medium to long term, this work is expected to help make cognitive accessibility and neurodiversity operational components of trustworthy AI rather than solely high-level principles. If taken forward through standardisation, the proposed taxonomy, candidate indicators, evaluation methods and privacy-preserving logging approach could help providers detect recurring misunderstandings, cognitive overload, inaccessible explanations and ineffective human oversight earlier in the AI lifecycle.

Societally, this can reduce digital exclusion and strengthen effective access and fundamental-rights protection for neurodivergent people, persons with cognitive disabilities, older people and others encountering interaction barriers. Technologically, common concepts and comparable evidence practices can improve consistency and interoperability among providers, deployers, auditors and conformity-assessment bodies, while supporting accessible-by-design innovation without requiring the collection of diagnostic data.

For European SMEs, the Technical Gap Analysis and SME Toolkit translate the AI Act and emerging standards into proportionate checklists and implementation steps. This can reduce regulatory ambiguity, compliance costs, rework and barriers to adoption; improve preparedness for conformity assessment and cross-border market access; and strengthen SMEs’ capacity to offer inclusive products and services to a wider workforce and customer base.