Disability inclusion in global development starts with a question most teams never ask: who is your technology quietly leaving out? Dr. Victor Santiago Pineda, executive director of Berkeley's Center for Independent Living, president of the global inclusion nonprofit World Enabled, and one of the youngest delegates to help draft the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, joins Amie Vaccaro and guest co-host Erin Quinn for a conversation that moves from a Caracas classroom, where his mother was told her son could never be educated, to the floor of the United Nations, to the frontier of artificial intelligence. Dr. Pineda explains why the assistive technology of today becomes the mainstream technology of tomorrow, why AI trained on averages risks erasing the people at the edges of the bell curve, and what implementers and funders can do differently starting tomorrow: hire disabled technologists, build to WCAG AA, optimize for screen readers, demand accessibility through procurement. Underneath it all is his central claim — we already have enough knowledge to unlock human potential. What's missing isn't know-how. It's the collective decision to use it.
Related Resources:
Podcast hosted by Dr. Victor Pineda: The Independent: Meeting the Moment for Disability Justice available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube
The Center for Independent Living (CIL), Berkeley – The world's first independent living center, founded in 1972 and now led by Dr. Pineda; the origin point for many principles later written into the UN CRPD.
Pineda Foundation / World Enabled – Dr. Pineda's global nonprofit advancing inclusive urban development, digital equity, and disability rights worldwide.
UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) – The treaty Dr. Pineda helped draft, setting out the rights and dignity of over a billion people with disabilities.
Being Heumann (Apple Original Films) – Siân Heder's film of Judy Heumann's memoir and the 26-day 1977 Section 504 sit-in; TIFF opening night, in theaters November 6 and on Apple TV November 13, 2026.
Protect Section 504 (DREDF) – Tracks the multi-state lawsuit challenging Section 504 regulations that Dr. Pineda references, with advocacy tools.
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) – The W3C standard Dr. Pineda urges teams to build to at Level AA or higher.
Positive AI Labs – Nonprofit building open datasets and evaluations to steer frontier AI toward pluralistic knowledge of human flourishing, cited by Dr. Pineda as an example of getting wisdom traditions into models before the training loop closes.
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Hosts: Jonathan Jackson and Amie Vaccaro
