# Opportunities for AI in Accessibility

DevFeed: [Opportunities for AI in Accessibility](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/opportunities-for-ai-in-accessibility-4311.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://alistapart.com/article/opportunities-for-ai-in-accessibility/>)

Author: by Aaron Gustafson

Published: 2024-02-07T14:00:00Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [A List Apart: The Full Feed](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/a-list-apart-the-full-feed.md>)

Topics: [Accessibility](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/accessibility.md>), [Artificial Intelligence](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ai.md>), [alt text](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/alt-text.md>), [Computer vision](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/computer-vision.md>), [foundation-models](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/foundation-models.md>)

Tags: [accessibility](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/accessibility.md>), [accessibility-code-content-workflow-tools](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/accessibility-code-content-workflow-tools.md>), [ai](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ai.md>), [alt-text](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/alt-text.md>), [code](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/code.md>), [computer-vision](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/computer-vision.md>), [content](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/content.md>), [foundation-models](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/foundation-models.md>), [microsoft](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/microsoft.md>), [workflow-tools](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/workflow-tools.md>)

## AI overview

The article argues that, despite serious risks and limitations, AI could support accessibility when used thoughtfully and inclusively. It focuses on computer-vision systems for generating alt text, noting their difficulty understanding image context and distinguishing meaningful images from decorative ones. The author supports human-in-the-loop workflows in which AI provides an initial suggestion that people can review and improve.

## Source excerpt

In reading Joe Dolson's recent piece on the intersection of AI and accessibility, I absolutely appreciated the skepticism that he has for AI in general as well as for the ways that many have been using it. In fact, I'm very skeptical of AI myself, despite my role at Microsoft as an accessibility innovation strategist who helps run the AI for Accessibility grant program. As with any tool, AI can be used in very constructive, inclusive, and accessible ways; and it can also be used in destructive, exclusive, and harmful ones. And there are a ton of uses somewhere in the mediocre middle as well. I'd like you to consider this a "yes... and" piece to complement Joe's post. I'm not trying to refute any of what he's saying but rather provide some visibility to projects and opportunities where AI can make meaningful differences for people with disabilities. To be clear, I'm not saying that there aren't real risks or pressing issues with AI that need to be addressed--there are, and we've needed to address them, like, yesterday--but I want to take a little time to talk about what's possible in hopes that we'll get there one day. Alternative text Joe's piece spends a lot of time talking about computer-vision models generating alternative text. He highlights a ton of valid issues with the current state of things. And while computer-vision models continue to improve in the quality and richness of detail in their descriptions, their results aren't great. As he rightly points out, the current state of image analysis is pretty poor--especially for certain image types--in large part because current AI systems examine images in isolation rather than within the contexts that they're in (which is a consequence of having separate "foundation" models for text analysis and image analysis). Today's models aren't trained to distinguish between images that are contextually relevant (that should probably have descriptions) and those that are purely decorative (which might not need a description) eit