OpenAI's recent announcement on ChatGPT Atlas was a bombshell in the tech world. For me, it particularly resonated. Four months ago, on June 18th, I had the pleasure of speaking at a panel discussion at the Acquia Engage Paris 2025 event. My conviction, which I shared at the time, was that the future of web content consumption would involve personalized AI agents, acting as true assistants for us. Today, this prediction is taking concrete and spectacular form. This represents a tremendous opportunity for digital accessibility, provided we prepare for it now. A look back at a vision that is becoming a fundamental trend.

Many thanks to Benoît Monet of Acquia for moderating this fascinating session, as well as to my fellow panelists Mick Levy and Phil Bretherton for the richness of our discussions.

Back to Acquia Engage: AI, already a concrete lever for accessibility

During our panel, I first emphasized the already real contributions of artificial intelligence to making the web more inclusive. At Smile, we are already exploring and implementing solutions where AI is becoming a valuable aid for content creators:

Generating alternative text for images: This is often a tedious task, but crucial for visually impaired people. AI can automate this task, ensuring that no meaningful image remains "silent" for a screen reader. More generally, this use case can be extended to all texts that are useful for Internet users with disabilities ("page titles," "front" titles of links or buttons, aria-label attribute values, section titles, form labels) and which are not always properly completed by contributors.

Content simplification: For people with cognitive difficulties, AI can adapt complex texts to meet the FALC (Easy to Read and Understand) standard, making information truly accessible to all.

These pragmatic and effective use cases are just the first step in a much more profound revolution.

My June Prediction: AI Agents to Reinvent Access to Information

My longer-term vision, shared at this event, was this: the way we "surf" the web will radically change. We'll be spending less and less time manually comparing information across ten different sites. We'll delegate these tasks to personal AI agents.

Imagine this: you ask your agent to find the heating system that best meets your needs, and they'll take care of scouring the web, reading reviews, comparing product descriptions, and delivering a perfect summary.

For people with disabilities, this is an extraordinary promise. Everyone will be able to have an agent configured to their specific needs: an agent that communicates vocally, systematically simplifies texts in FALC, or describes the world in audio. A unique, tailor-made interface to access the infinite possibilities of the web.

ChatGPT Atlas: Prediction becomes a fundamental trend

The arrival of tools like OpenAI's Atlas is making this prediction a reality. We are entering an era where intelligent agents no longer simply answer questions, but act for us on the web.

These technologies have the potential to become the most powerful lever for digital inclusion we have ever known. They can smooth out the complexities of diverse interfaces and provide a unified and accessible experience.

But there is one essential condition, a point of vigilance that I highlighted at the time: for these agents to work, the websites they visit must be structurally flawless.

The new imperative: Technical accessibility, the key to tomorrow's visibility

I like to remind you: the biggest blind person on the internet has always been Google's indexing robot. To "understand" a page, it doesn't look at its design; it reads its structure: its tags, its alt texts, its ARIA roles. Accessibility has therefore always been an ally of SEO.

Tomorrow, these AI agents will be billions of personalized "Google bots."

For them, a visually stunning but poorly structured site will be an incomprehensible black box. Conversely, a perfectly accessible site, with rigorous HTML semantics and well-organized information, will be an open book. AI agents will be able to reliably extract information from it and perfectly render it to its user.

The challenge for businesses is therefore immense: accessibility is no longer just a legal or ethical obligation; it is becoming the sine qua non of your visibility and relevance in a world driven by AI.

Let's prepare for the future, together

The convergence of AI and accessibility represents a historic opportunity to build a truly universal web. Tools like ChatGPT Atlas are just the beginning. At Smile, we are passionate about this convergence and are convinced that open and flexible platforms, like those offered by our partner Acquia, are the ideal foundation for building this future.

Ensuring the technical and semantic excellence of your digital platforms today means ensuring they will be ready to interact with the agents of tomorrow and, consequently, serve all your users, without exception.

So if you would like a personalized presentation of our expertise, don't hesitate to https://smile.eu/en/contactcontact us.

The conference replay is available here.