Conference Program

With the progressive embedding of generative artificial intelligence in social and institutional life, the question of who retains the epistemic agency necessary to participate authentically in democratic processes acquires growing pedagogical relevance. This contribution examines the intersection of ageing, disability and AI from the perspective of Special Education and philosophy of education, arguing that older persons with disabilities represent a privileged vantage point from which to observe a structural dynamic, particularly in contexts of digital access to healthcare services, welfare provision and public information, where the immediate availability of AI-generated responses may reduce genuine cognitive engagement, producing a condition in which discursive fluency tends to replace the active construction of knowledge and judgement.

Drawing on the concept of algorithmic citizenship (Di Tore et al., 2024) and on the foundational insight of McLuhan and de Kerckhove that media function as cognitive environments reshaping the conditions of knowledge (de Kerckhove, 1995; McLuhan, 1964), the paper argues that generative AI reconfigures the socio-technical conditions within which democratic participation, self-determination and the construction of life projects become possible or constrained. When AI systems anticipate needs, pre-formulate choices and smooth the cognitive friction necessary for deliberation, they risk replacing inclusive design with forms of structural cognitive delegation— a subtle yet decisive erosion of the right to think and decide.

The analysis is situated within the framework of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD, 2006), which recognises legal capacity and political participation as non-negotiable dimensions of human dignity throughout the life course. In this context, Special Education is called to move beyond functional accessibility towards what the paper conceptualises as epistemic accessibility: the design of AI-mediated environments that support older persons’ capacity to question and reinterpret their understanding of the world. This reorientation is developed in dialogue with Latour’s actor-network theory (2005) and with the Foucauldian notion of dispositif (1980), in order to examine how AI systems constitute regimes of visibility that may open or close the space for deliberation.

From a methodological standpoint, the paper adopts a theoretical–conceptual approach, developing its argument through a critical engagement with philosophical and pedagogical literature as well as science and technology studies, in dialogue with perspectives on algorithmic explainability in education (Selwyn, 2019; Williamson, 2019) and with disability studies addressing life projects and citizenship in later life (Priestley, 2003; Simplican et al., 2015).

The paper concludes by proposing pedagogical principles for the design of AI in contexts of disability in later life: the preservation of deliberative space, the recognition of embodied cognition as a constitutive dimension of democratic agency (Varela et al., 1991), the promotion of intergenerational digital solidarity, and the recognition of education in later life as an infrastructure for critical participation. Against a reductive assistive paradigm, inclusive education for older persons with disabilities is thus reinterpreted as a site of epistemological and political resistance: not an additional layer of welfare provision, but a pedagogical condition for democratic quality.