Between the vendor’s claim and the institution’s signature.

Procurement Is Outrunning the Evidence

Institutions are buying AI-mediated accessibility (AI interpreting, signing avatars, automated captioning, language access tools) faster than their governance instruments can evaluate it. A conformance report describes whether an interface works with assistive technology. It says nothing about whether a Deaf user can understand the output, whether the system fails safely in an emergency room, or whether the training data was collected with consent.

That is the seat we occupy, and it takes three things to hold it: the linguistic competence to evaluate the output, the procurement competence to translate findings into contract terms, and the independence to say when the evidence is not there.

Deaf-led and community-accountable · Procurement-literate · Method-documented · We do not publish findings about organizations that pay us.