In order to be truly accessible, autonomous vehicles must be usable completely independently by wheelchair users whose chairs cannot be folded, lifted, or stowed, and who must remain in them for the full ride.
That means self-deploying ramps. It means securement systems. It means vehicles designed around non-ambulatory wheelchair users from the start.
I do not know of any AV fleet currently planning this accessibility at scale.
London already has a model for this. Black cabs are wheelchair accessible because they have ramps and drivers trained to deploy them. They allow many wheelchair users to travel while remaining in their chairs.
To be extremely clear: accessibility cannot only mean βworks for someone who can transfer,β or βworks for someone with a lightweight folding wheelchair,β or βhelps older adults who are struggling to drive because of vision loss.β
Those disabilities matter. They require accommodation too.
But no taxi system can honestly call itself accessible if it excludes people who cannot fold their wheelchairs and cannot transfer out of them for the journey.
The rollout of AV taxis like Waymo is not only a labor issue. It is an access issue.
In cities where much of the transit system remains inaccessible, where lifts are absent or unreliable, and where wheelchair spaces on buses are still treated as optional, replacing human-operated accessible taxis with inaccessible autonomous fleets would be catastrophic.
This is an urgent disability rights issue.
