keyword

linguistic accessibility

Linguistic accessibility refers to the extent to which information, digital tools, services, and communication systems are usable and easily understood by individuals in their native or preferred languages. It emphasizes the removal of language-based barriers so that all communities, particularly those speaking low-resource, regional, or minority languages, can participate equally in society and the digital economy. In technological and global contexts, linguistic accessibility determines whether individuals can effectively engage with digital platforms, software, and artificial intelligence, where a lack of language support can limit technology adoption, restrict access to essential resources, and widen existing digital and socioeconomic divides.

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AI Diffusion in Low Resource Language Countries

Amit Misra, Syed Waqas Zamir, Wassim Hamidouche, Inbal Becker-Reshef, Juan M. Lavista Ferres

OrganizationsMicrosoft

Why you should read this

Demonstrates that low-resource language countries suffer a twenty percent reduction in artificial intelligence adoption rates, isolating linguistic accessibility as an independent barrier to global technology diffusion.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is diffusing globally at unprecedented speed, but adoption remains uneven. Frontier Large Language Models (LLMs) are known to perform poorly on low-resource languages due to data scarcity. We hypothesize that this performance deficit reduces the utility of AI, thereby slowing adoption in Low-Resource Language Countries (LRLCs). To test this, we use a weighted regression model to isolate the language effect from socioeconomic and demographic factors, finding that LRLCs have a share of AI users that is approximately 20% lower relative to their baseline. These results indicate that linguistic accessibility is a significant, independent barrier to equitable AI diffusion.

Source

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2511.02752v1.pdf

Added

2026-09-29