January 29, 2026
Building on the initial success of the SciFY initiative, the pilot phase of “People with Disabilities as AI Pioneers” has now been completed. Implemented in collaboration with the Institute of Informatics and Telecommunications (IIT) at NCSR Demokritos MagCIL team of Dr Theodoros Giannakopoulos, the IIT BioHIT team of Dr Anastasia Krithara – in the framework of the Smart Health project – and the IIT DIA team of Dr Vassilis Gatos, the pilot focused on the paid employment of people with disabilities as AI data annotators, contributing to real research needs in Artificial Intelligence.
The initial phase involved three autistic individuals with low support needs and five people with psychiatric conditions, who worked six hours per week over a three-month period on annotation tasks. The pilot was evaluated through feedback from the participants, input from supporting mental health professionals, and interviews with ΙΙΤ researchers, with results indicating high levels of satisfaction and strong quality outcomes. Following this phase, the programme continued from October 2024 to mid-January 2025 with the paid employment of eight autistic individuals with low support needs on annotation projects for the Institute of Informatics and Telecommunications.
In 2026, 27 new People with Disabilities were trained, including people with motor disabilities. Newly and previously trained People with Disabilities were employed for a total of about 1000 hours. New job opportunities were secured for 25 People with Disabilities who advanced to the phase of part-time employment: ΙΙΤ Researchers reported that the work addressed a genuine research gap, delivered very satisfactory annotation quality, and contributed to improvements in annotation tools and workflows.
Beyond its practical impact, the pilot highlighted the importance of inclusivity in AI development. The involvement of non-neurotypical annotators brings valuable perspectives on emotion perception, tone, clarity and speech rhythm—factors that are critical for the responsible training of AI systems, particularly those intended for use by people with disabilities.
Following the completion of the pilot phase, SciFY aims to expand the initiative to additional disability groups and to enable trained annotators to participate in future AI annotation projects with new employers.
For more information, visit SciFY’s website and watch the video below: