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China’s largest online delivery service, Taobao Instant Commerce, handles 40 million orders a day. But to coordinate a final handoff, couriers often call customers on the phone to meet up — a hurdle for workers who are deaf or hard of hearing. The issue has a real economic impact: Researchers at the University of Toronto, UC Santa Barbara, and Zhejiang University found that deaf and hard-of-hearing couriers earned 10% less per hour than other colleagues. They also received more negative customer ratings and were more likely to make late deliveries. In an effort to close that pay gap, three engineers at Taobao worked in their off hours to build a simple accessibility feature that allows workers to select preset messages (or write their own), and use the AI tool to call the customer and read out the message. Researchers estimated that the tool closed roughly a third of the hourly pay gap. Late deliveries and bad ratings also declined, with workers who had more severe hearing loss benefiting the most. The feature is part of a broader accessibility push in China, where businesses are required to reserve at least 1.5% of job opportunities for people with disabilities. After Taobao rolled out its AI calling feature, rival Meituan followed suit.
document fetched 2026-10-29 03:03 · canonical https://semafor.com/article/10/26/2026/taobaos-ai-enabled-deliveries-help-close-pay-gap-for-deaf-couriers