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You are here: Home » Accessible Course Design, Artificial Intelligence, Assistive Technology, Captioning/Transcription, Faculty Development & Support, Web/Media/App Access » The Human in the Loop: Why We Can’t Outsource Alt Text to AI

The Human in the Loop: Why We Can’t Outsource Alt Text to AI

Scheduled at 10:45 in Mattie Silks on Friday, November 20.

#43274

Speaker(s)

  • Scott Davis, Director of Digital Accessibility, Front Range Community College

Session Details

  • Length of Session: 1-hr
  • Format: Lecture
  • Expertise Level: All Levels
  • Type of session: General Conference

Summary

Writing meaningful alternative text is notoriously difficult. With the rapid advancement of generative AI, automated image descriptions are often presented as a magic bullet. This session explores the delicate balance between leveraging AI as an assistive drafting tool and preserving the human empathy required for genuine digital accessibility.

Abstract

Writing meaningful alternative text is notoriously difficult. It requires an understanding of context, audience, and intent. With the rapid advancement of generative AI, the tech world is quick to promise that "AI can do all the things," presenting automated image descriptions as a magic-bullet solution to a 30-year-old accessibility failure.

But can we really outsource empathy to an algorithm?

While AI is a powerful tool for identifying objects and generating baseline text, wholesale outsourcing of alt text to AI strips away a vital component: the human perspective. AI can identify a crowd of people, but it lacks the lived experience to convey the purpose, emotion, and dignity of a moment within a specific cultural or educational context.

This session explores the delicate balance between leveraging AI as an assistive drafting tool and preserving the human wisdom required for genuine accessibility. We will examine where automated descriptions succeed, where they hallucinate or introduce bias, and why the "lived experience" of human authors is a crucial part of the alt text writing process.

Attendees will learn how to shift their mindset from "automating accessibility" to "AI-assisted authoring," ensuring that human judgment always serves as the final, empathetic filter.

Keypoints

  1. AI generates alt text quickly, but lacks the human empathy and context needed for true accessibility.
  2. Treat AI as an assistive drafting tool, using human wisdom to review, refine, and correct its output.
  3. Center the lived experience of disabled users to craft alt text that prioritizes equity and dignity.

Disability Areas

Cognitive/Learning, Psychological, Vision

Topic Areas

Accessible Course Design, Artificial Intelligence, Assistive Technology, Captioning/Transcription, Faculty Development & Support, Web/Media/App Access

Speaker Bio(s)

Scott Davis

Scott Davis is the Director of Digital Accessibility at Front Range Community College in Colorado. Scott focuses on the multisensory aspects of web development and computing. In a world where half of all Google searches are done by voice, and 80% of all social media videos are watched with the sound off and closed captions on, accessibility is a springboard for innovation.