Accessibility and artificial intelligence: the role of automation in providing access for people with disabilities

February 8, 2023 Reese Oxner

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It seems like a new artificial intelligence tool is released every day. In theory, there are a lot of ways it could automate in one of the areas that newsrooms seem to struggle in most — providing accessibility options for users.

So with more sophisticated AI tools coming on the scene — like ChatGPT — does that mean newsrooms can sit back and delegate accessibility work to bots?

Not exactly, according to Patrick Garvin, an accessibility expert who has worked in journalism and front-end development for over 15 years, in a presentation shared with News Product Alliance members on a monthly community call.

While automation and AI are an essential piece in the accessibility design process — newsrooms need to dedicate human effort toward providing an excellent user experience for people with disabilities or cognitive impairments, Garvin said.

Ideally, the process begins during the product design process, so it can be built with accessibility in mind, he said. Many newsrooms already lag behind when thinking about accessibility — and it’s crucial that bots aren’t used as a crutch to avoid making it a real part of your newsroom’s strategy.

“Bottom line, we need humans,” Garvin said. “[AI] can't replace human judgment, they can't replace human experience. Our content won’t be fully and truly accessible until we humans are doing the work — so we need to start doing the work.”

But first — what is accessibility?

Let’s start at the beginning.

Garvin deferred to the World Wide Web Consortium’s definition of accessibility (which he called the “Jedi Council” of web standards): “Web accessibility means that websites, tools, and technologies are designed and developed so that people with disabilities can use them.”

The consortium provides several standards for web developers to include accessibility considerations — for things including font size, color and ALT text requirements (hidden text that screen readers can use to describe to visually-impaired users).

“But these guidelines are the floor, not the ceiling,” he said. Newsrooms should pursue the many ways to serve people with disabilities better than the minimum.

And it’s not just physical disabilities that should be considered, Garvin said. People with cognitive disabilities or people with conditions like ADHD should also be considered in the product development process.

There are three components crucial to designing accessible products, Garvin said. We need to listen to people with disabilities. We need to build products that center them in the process. And we need to test our products (and retest them) against web accessibility standards.

Garvin didn’t mince words about the importance of making news products accessible to audiences: If newsrooms don’t have an accessibility strategy as part of their diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, they’re failing their users, he said.

Automated Tools

There are several tools that can assist journalists in creating accessible content and products. One of those tools is called WAVE Web Aim, which allows users to scan websites for potential accessibility issues.

It’s a starting point, Garvin said. Sometimes there are “false positives” for errors, for example, if some web elements are layered the tool might think there is a contrast error or maybe an image is missing ALT text because it is decoration. It’s important to follow up on what the tools flag and decide what is impacting accessibility.

WAVE and other tools — such as Axe DevTools or Lighthouse — can catch around 25% to half of common errors, such as missing alt text, forgetting to specify a page’s language, or HTML tags that describe it’s architecture (such as <main> or <footer>). It can tell you if your color contrast isn’t acceptable.

But these tools won’t catch several “ginormous” issues, Garvin said. These include if ALT text is low quality, whether an image is decorative,, is the website functional only using a keyboard or assessing a user’s experience using a screen reader.

Likewise, tools like Otter.AI or built-in transcript generators can be an excellent starting point for accessibility, but it takes a person to go back in and correct errors to truly serve your entire audience.

“We can only depend on computers and AI and Chat GPT so much,” he said. “We are still going to need to do a lot of work.”

Social platforms allow users to add ALT text to images prior to publishing. But if left empty, some, such as Facebook or Instagram, will add automatic ALT text, Garvin said. However, the auto-generated text is often obscure, unhelpful or even inaccurate.

Garvin gave an example by contrasting ALT text he wrote versus ALT text Facebook automatically generated. Garvin wrote ALT text for the cover art of his presentation. It reads: “A scene from the Terminator movies in which several skeletal, robotic terminators are grouped together, holding guns. Their eyes are red and their mouths are frozen in a menacing, empty smile. They look dangerous and scary. In the top left corner there is text that says: “Accessibility, A.I., and automation: The future is here?”

Contrast that paragraph with the text that Facebook suggests for the same image.

“May be a cartoon of text.”

Garvin warns emphatically, don’t do it.

“When it comes to letting AI determine alt text — Bad News Bears,” he said. “Do not do it. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. No ma'am. No way, no how. No woman, no cry. No, do not do it.”

Gavin also warned, don’t use accessibility overlays — tech products that promise to solve accessibility challenges automatically with one line of code. They’re too good to be true and fail to serve people with disabilities, he said.

“If it sounds like it is bulls—, it is bulls—,” he said. “It's a predatory thing. It's not good.”

Tools for readability

There are tools that can help writers understand the difficulty of their writing. Tools like Hemmingway or Readable can highlight paragraphs that might be too complex.

Writing in easy-to-understand language can help people with conditions like ADHD or autism, stroke survivors, people who learned English as a second language, among others, he said. It also broadly enhances the user experience.

“How about those of us who are burnt out after three years of working from home and having to tell someone that they're still on mute,” he said. “You know, the cognitive load decreases and executive function decreases the more you work when you’re in a hurry, tired, distracted or hungry. And that describes me basically like most of the time.”

ChatGPT

ChatGPT is having a moment. Whether it’s publishers trying it out for automatically writing articles (spoiler alert: half of the AI-written articles one publisher published contained errors) or legal professionals consulting the bot for legal advice — the use cases are wide-ranging.

Garvin has a few predictions.

ChatGPT will be good for people using speech-generating devices or with limited dexterity to fill in gaps quicker in communicating. It can help people learning English or who struggle with grammar or spelling. It could correct passages for people with communication-related disabilities.

But what could it struggle with? Answering nuanced questions about accessibility. Helping people with subjective accessibility problems. Explaining the purpose of a page or breaking it into meaningful sections — or writing sentences correctly with links geared toward people using screen readers.

The bottom line? Tech can help newsrooms solve accessibility challenges. But it doesn’t replace journalists doing the work themselves — in fact, the work is just getting started.

Below is a list of resources Garvin provided surrounding web accessibility.

References linked in the presentation

General accessibility

Color contrast

Colorblind considerations

Data Visualization & Accessibility

W3C Resources

Otter.ai Resources

3Play Media Resources

Additional resources

People to follow on Twitter (general accessibility)

People to follow on Twitter (data visuals + accessibility)